Reflections

Primary Sources

TEXT: Plotinus, The Enneads 5-6 (tr MacKenna/Page)

     __________________________________________________________________

THE FIFTH ENNEAD
     __________________________________________________________________

  FIRST TRACTATE.

  THE THREE INITIAL HYPOSTASES.

   1. What can it be that has brought the souls to forget the father, God,
   and, though members of the Divine and entirely of that world, to ignore
   at once themselves and It?

   The evil that has overtaken them has its source in self-will, in the
   entry into the sphere of process, and in the primal differentiation
   with the desire for self ownership. They conceived a pleasure in this
   freedom and largely indulged their own motion; thus they were hurried
   down the wrong path, and in the end, drifting further and further, they
   came to lose even the thought of their origin in the Divine. A child
   wrenched young from home and brought up during many years at a distance
   will fail in knowledge of its father and of itself: the souls, in the
   same way, no longer discern either the divinity or their own nature;
   ignorance of their rank brings self-depreciation; they misplace their
   respect, honouring everything more than themselves; all their awe and
   admiration is for the alien, and, clinging to this, they have broken
   apart, as far as a soul may, and they make light of what they have
   deserted; their regard for the mundane and their disregard of
   themselves bring about their utter ignoring of the divine.

   Admiring pursuit of the external is a confession of inferiority; and
   nothing thus holding itself inferior to things that rise and perish,
   nothing counting itself less honourable and less enduring than all else
   it admires could ever form any notion of either the nature or the power
   of God.

   A double discipline must be applied if human beings in this pass are to
   be reclaimed, and brought back to their origins, lifted once more
   towards the Supreme and One and First.

   There is the method, which we amply exhibit elsewhere, declaring the
   dishonour of the objects which the Soul holds here in honour; the
   second teaches or recalls to the soul its race and worth; this latter
   is the leading truth, and, clearly brought out, is the evidence of the
   other.

   It must occupy us now for it bears closely upon our enquiry to which it
   is the natural preliminary: the seeker is soul and it must start from a
   true notion of the nature and quality by which soul may undertake the
   search; it must study itself in order to learn whether it has the
   faculty for the enquiry, the eye for the object proposed, whether in
   fact we ought to seek; for if the object is alien the search must be
   futile, while if there is relationship the solution of our problem is
   at once desirable and possible.

   2. Let every soul recall, then, at the outset the truth that soul is
   the author of all living things, that it has breathed the life into
   them all, whatever is nourished by earth and sea, all the creatures of
   the air, the divine stars in the sky; it is the maker of the sun;
   itself formed and ordered this vast heaven and conducts all that
   rhythmic motion; and it is a principle distinct from all these to which
   it gives law and movement and life, and it must of necessity be more
   honourable than they, for they gather or dissolve as soul brings them
   life or abandons them, but soul, since it never can abandon itself, is
   of eternal being.

   How life was purveyed to the universe of things and to the separate
   beings in it may be thus conceived:

   That great soul must stand pictured before another soul, one not mean,
   a soul that has become worthy to look, emancipate from the lure, from
   all that binds its fellows in bewitchment, holding itself in quietude.
   Let not merely the enveloping body be at peace, body's turmoil stilled,
   but all that lies around, earth at peace, and sea at peace, and air and
   the very heavens. Into that heaven, all at rest, let the great soul be
   conceived to roll inward at every point, penetrating, permeating, from
   all sides pouring in its light. As the rays of the sun throwing their
   brilliance upon a lowering cloud make it gleam all gold, so the soul
   entering the material expanse of the heavens has given life, has given
   immortality: what was abject it has lifted up; and the heavenly system,
   moved now in endless motion by the soul that leads it in wisdom, has
   become a living and a blessed thing; the soul domiciled within, it
   takes worth where, before the soul, it was stark body -- clay and water
   -- or, rather, the blankness of Matter, the absence of Being, and, as
   an author says, "the execration of the Gods."

   The Soul's nature and power will be brought out more clearly, more
   brilliantly, if we consider next how it envelops the heavenly system
   and guides all to its purposes: for it has bestowed itself upon all
   that huge expanse so that every interval, small and great alike, all
   has been ensouled.

   The material body is made up of parts, each holding its own place, some
   in mutual opposition and others variously interdependent; the soul is
   in no such condition; it is not whittled down so that life tells of a
   part of the soul and springs where some such separate portion impinges;
   each separate life lives by the soul entire, omnipresent in the
   likeness of the engendering father, entire in unity and entire in
   diffused variety. By the power of the soul the manifold and diverse
   heavenly system is a unit: through soul this universe is a God: and the
   sun is a God because it is ensouled; so too the stars: and whatsoever
   we ourselves may be, it is all in virtue of soul; for "dead is viler
   than dung."

   This, by which the gods are divine, must be the oldest God of them all:
   and our own soul is of that same Ideal nature, so that to consider it,
   purified, freed from all accruement, is to recognise in ourselves that
   same value which we have found soul to be, honourable above all that is
   bodily. For what is body but earth, and, taking fire itself, what [but
   soul] is its burning power? So it is with all the compounds of earth
   and fire, even with water and air added to them?

   If, then, it is the presence of soul that brings worth, how can a man
   slight himself and run after other things? You honour the Soul
   elsewhere; honour then yourself.

   3. The Soul once seen to be thus precious, thus divine, you may hold
   the faith that by its possession you are already nearing God: in the
   strength of this power make upwards towards Him: at no great distance
   you must attain: there is not much between.

   But over this divine, there is still a diviner: grasp the upward
   neighbour of the soul, its prior and source.

   Soul, for all the worth we have shown to belong to it, is yet a
   secondary, an image of the Intellectual-Principle: reason uttered is an
   image of the reason stored within the soul, and in the same way soul is
   an utterance of the Intellectual-Principle: it is even the total of its
   activity, the entire stream of life sent forth by that Principle to the
   production of further being; it is the forthgoing heat of a fire which
   has also heat essentially inherent. But within the Supreme we must see
   energy not as an overflow but in the double aspect of integral
   inherence with the establishment of a new being. Sprung, in other
   words, from the Intellectual-Principle, Soul is intellective, but with
   an intellection operation by the method of reasonings: for its
   perfecting it must look to that Divine Mind, which may be thought of as
   a father watching over the development of his child born imperfect in
   comparison with himself.

   Thus its substantial existence comes from the Intellectual-Principle;
   and the Reason within it becomes Act in virtue of its contemplation of
   that prior; for its thought and act are its own intimate possession
   when it looks to the Supreme Intelligence; those only are soul-acts
   which are of this intellective nature and are determined by its own
   character; all that is less noble is foreign [traceable to Matter] and
   is accidental to the soul in the course of its peculiar task.

   In two ways, then, the Intellectual-Principle enhances the divine
   quality of the soul, as father and as immanent presence; nothing
   separates them but the fact that they are not one and the same, that
   there is succession, that over against a recipient there stands the
   ideal-form received; but this recipient, Matter to the Supreme
   Intelligence, is also noble as being at once informed by divine
   intellect and uncompounded.

   What the Intellectual-Principle must be is carried in the single word
   that Soul, itself so great, is still inferior.

   4. But there is yet another way to this knowledge:

   Admiring the world of sense as we look out upon its vastness and beauty
   and the order of its eternal march, thinking of the gods within it,
   seen and hidden, and the celestial spirits and all the life of animal
   and plant, let us mount to its archetype, to the yet more authentic
   sphere: there we are to contemplate all things as members of the
   Intellectual -- eternal in their own right, vested with a
   self-springing consciousness and life -- and, presiding over all these,
   the unsoiled Intelligence and the unapproachable wisdom.

   That archetypal world is the true Golden Age, age of Kronos, who is the
   Intellectual-Principle as being the offspring or exuberance of God. For
   here is contained all that is immortal: nothing here but is Divine
   Mind; all is God; this is the place of every soul. Here is rest
   unbroken: for how can that seek change, in which all is well; what need
   that reach to, which holds all within itself; what increase can that
   desire, which stands utterly achieved? All its content, thus, is
   perfect, that itself may be perfect throughout, as holding nothing that
   is less than the divine, nothing that is less than intellective. Its
   knowing is not by search but by possession, its blessedness inherent,
   not acquired; for all belongs to it eternally and it holds the
   authentic Eternity imitated by Time which, circling round the Soul,
   makes towards the new thing and passes by the old. Soul deals with
   thing after thing -- now Socrates; now a horse: always some one entity
   from among beings -- but the Intellectual-Principle is all and
   therefore its entire content is simultaneously present in that
   identity: this is pure being in eternal actuality; nowhere is there any
   future, for every then is a now; nor is there any past, for nothing
   there has ever ceased to be; everything has taken its stand for ever,
   an identity well pleased, we might say, to be as it is; and everything,
   in that entire content, is Intellectual-Principle and Authentic
   Existence; and the total of all is Intellectual-Principle entire and
   Being entire. Intellectual-Principle by its intellective act
   establishes Being, which in turn, as the object of intellection,
   becomes the cause of intellection and of existence to the
   Intellectual-Principle -- though, of course, there is another cause of
   intellection which is also a cause to Being, both rising in a source
   distinct from either.

   Now while these two are coalescents, having their existence in common,
   and are never apart, still the unity they form is two-sided; there is
   Intellectual-Principle as against Being, the intellectual agent as
   against the object of intellection; we consider the intellective act
   and we have the Intellectual-Principle; we think of the object of that
   act and we have Being.

   Such difference there must be if there is to be any intellection; but
   similarly there must also be identity [since, in perfect knowing,
   subject and object are identical.]

   Thus the Primals [the first "Categories"] are seen to be:
   Intellectual-Principle; Existence; Difference; Identity: we must
   include also Motion and Rest: Motion provides for the intellectual act,
   Rest preserves identity as Difference gives at once a Knower and a
   Known, for, failing this, all is one, and silent.

   So too the objects of intellection [the ideal content of the Divine
   Mind] -- identical in virtue of the self-concentration of the principle
   which is their common ground -- must still be distinct each from
   another; this distinction constitutes Difference.

   The Intellectual Kosmos thus a manifold, Number and Quantity arise:
   Quality is the specific character of each of these ideas which stand as
   the principles from which all else derives.

   5. As a manifold, then, this God, the Intellectual-Principle, exists
   within the Soul here, the Soul which once for all stands linked a
   member of the divine, unless by a deliberate apostasy.

   Bringing itself close to the divine Intellect, becoming, as it were,
   one with this, it seeks still further: What Being, now, has engendered
   this God, what is the Simplex preceding this multiple; what the cause
   at once of its existence and of its existing as a manifold; what the
   source of this Number, this Quantity?

   Number, Quantity, is not primal: obviously before even duality, there
   must stand the unity.

   The Dyad is a secondary; deriving from unity, it finds in unity the
   determinant needed by its native indetermination: once there is any
   determination, there is Number, in the sense, of course, of the real
   [the archetypal] Number. And the soul is such a number or quantity. For
   the Primals are not masses or magnitudes; all of that gross order is
   later, real only to the sense-thought; even in seed the effective
   reality is not the moist substance but the unseen -- that is to say
   Number [as the determinant of individual being] and the
   Reason-Principle [of the product to be].

   Thus by what we call the Number and the Dyad of that higher realm, we
   mean Reason Principles and the Intellectual-Principle: but while the
   Dyad is, as regards that sphere, undetermined -- representing, as it
   were, the underly [or Matter] of The One -- the later Number [or
   Quantity] -- that which rises from the Dyad [Intellectual-Principle]
   and The One -- is not Matter to the later existents but is their
   forming-Idea, for all of them take shape, so to speak, from the ideas
   rising within this. The determination of the Dyad is brought about
   partly from its object -- The One -- and partly from itself, as is the
   case with all vision in the act of sight: intellection [the Act of the
   Dyad] is vision occupied upon The One.

   6. But how and what does the Intellectual-Principle see and,
   especially, how has it sprung from that which is to become the object
   of its vision?

   The mind demands the existence of these Beings, but it is still in
   trouble over the problem endlessly debated by the most ancient
   philosophers: from such a unity as we have declared The One to be, how
   does anything at all come into substantial existence, any multiplicity,
   dyad, or number? Why has the Primal not remained self-gathered so that
   there be none of this profusion of the manifold which we observe in
   existence and yet are compelled to trace to that absolute unity?

   In venturing an answer, we first invoke God Himself, not in loud word
   but in that way of prayer which is always within our power, leaning in
   soul towards Him by aspiration, alone towards the alone. But if we seek
   the vision of that great Being within the Inner Sanctuary --
   self-gathered, tranquilly remote above all else -- we begin by
   considering the images stationed at the outer precincts, or, more
   exactly to the moment, the first image that appears. How the Divine
   Mind comes into being must be explained:

   Everything moving has necessarily an object towards which it advances;
   but since the Supreme can have no such object, we may not ascribe
   motion to it: anything that comes into being after it can be produced
   only as a consequence of its unfailing self-intention; and, of course,
   we dare not talk of generation in time, dealing as we are with eternal
   Beings: where we speak of origin in such reference, it is in the sense,
   merely, of cause and subordination: origin from the Supreme must not be
   taken to imply any movement in it: that would make the Being resulting
   from the movement not a second principle but a third: the Movement
   would be the second hypostasis.

   Given this immobility in the Supreme, it can neither have yielded
   assent nor uttered decree nor stirred in any way towards the existence
   of a secondary.

   What happened then? What are we to conceive as rising in the
   neighbourhood of that immobility?

   It must be a circumradiation -- produced from the Supreme but from the
   Supreme unaltering -- and may be compared to the brilliant light
   encircling the sun and ceaselessly generated from that unchanging
   substance.

   All existences, as long as they retain their character, produce --
   about themselves, from their essence, in virtue of the power which must
   be in them -- some necessary, outward-facing hypostasis continuously
   attached to them and representing in image the engendering archetypes:
   thus fire gives out its heat; snow is cold not merely to itself;
   fragrant substances are a notable instance; for, as long as they last,
   something is diffused from them and perceived wherever they are
   present.

   Again, all that is fully achieved engenders: therefore the eternally
   achieved engenders eternally an eternal being. At the same time, the
   offspring is always minor: what then are we to think of the All-Perfect
   but that it can produce nothing less than the very greatest that is
   later than itself. The greatest, later than the divine unity, must be
   the Divine Mind, and it must be the second of all existence, for it is
   that which sees The One on which alone it leans while the First has no
   need whatever of it. The offspring of the prior to Divine Mind can be
   no other than that Mind itself and thus is the loftiest being in the
   universe, all else following upon it -- the soul, for example, being an
   utterance and act of the Intellectual-Principle as that is an utterance
   and act of The One. But in soul the utterance is obscured, for soul is
   an image and must look to its own original: that Principle, on the
   contrary, looks to the First without mediation -- thus becoming what it
   is -- and has that vision not as from a distance but as the immediate
   next with nothing intervening, close to the One as Soul to it.

   The offspring must seek and love the begetter; and especially so when
   begetter and begotten are alone in their sphere; when, in addition, the
   begetter is the highest good, the offspring [inevitably seeking its
   Good] is attached by a bond of sheer necessity, separated only in being
   distinct.

   7. We must be more explicit:

   The Intellectual-Principle stands as the image of The One, firstly
   because there is a certain necessity that the first should have its
   offspring, carrying onward much of its quality, in other words that
   there be something in its likeness as the sun's rays tell of the sun.
   Yet The One is not an Intellectual-Principle; how then does it engender
   an Intellectual-Principle?

   Simply by the fact that in its self-quest it has vision: this very
   seeing is the Intellectual-Principle. Any perception of the external
   indicates either sensation or intellection, sensation symbolized by a
   line, intellection by a circle... [corrupt passage].

   Of course the divisibility belonging to the circle does not apply to
   the Intellectual-Principle; all, there too, is a unity, though a unity
   which is the potentiality of all existence.

   The items of this potentiality the divine intellection brings out, so
   to speak, from the unity and knows them in detail, as it must if it is
   to be an intellectual principle.

   It has besides a consciousness, as it were, within itself of this same
   potentiality; it knows that it can of itself beget an hypostasis and
   can determine its own Being by the virtue emanating from its prior; it
   knows that its nature is in some sense a definite part of the content
   of that First; that it thence derives its essence, that its strength
   lies there and that its Being takes perfection as a derivative and a
   recipient from the First. It sees that, as a member of the realm of
   division and part, it receives life and intellection and all else it
   has and is, from the undivided and partless, since that First is no
   member of existence, but can be the source of all on condition only of
   being held down by no one distinctive shape but remaining the
   undeflected unity.

   [(CORRUPT) -- Thus it would be the entire universe but that...]

   And so the First is not a thing among the things contained by the
   Intellectual-Principle though the source of all. In virtue of this
   source, things of the later order are essential beings; for from that
   fact there is determination; each has its form: what has being cannot
   be envisaged as outside of limit; the nature must be held fast by
   boundary and fixity; though to the Intellectual Beings this fixity is
   no more than determination and form, the foundations of their
   substantial existence.

   A being of this quality, like the Intellectual-Principle, must be felt
   to be worthy of the all-pure: it could not derive from any other than
   from the first principle of all; as it comes into existence, all other
   beings must be simultaneously engendered -- all the beauty of the
   Ideas, all the Gods of the Intellectual realm. And it still remains
   pregnant with this offspring; for it has, so to speak, drawn all within
   itself again, holding them lest they fall away towards Matter to be
   "brought up in the House of Rhea" [in the realm of flux]. This is the
   meaning hidden in the Mysteries, and in the Myths of the gods: Kronos,
   as the wisest, exists before Zeus; he must absorb his offspring that,
   full within himself, he may be also an Intellectual-Principle manifest
   in some product of his plenty; afterwards, the myth proceeds, Kronos
   engenders Zeus, who already exists as the [necessary and eternal]
   outcome of the plenty there; in other words the offspring of the Divine
   Intellect, perfect within itself, is Soul [the life-principle carrying
   forward the Ideas in the Divine Mind].

   Now, even in the Divine the engendered could not be the very highest;
   it must be a lesser, an image; it will be undetermined, as the Divine
   is, but will receive determination, and, so to speak, its shaping idea,
   from the progenitor.

   Yet any offspring of the Intellectual-Principle must be a
   Reason-Principle; the thought of the Divine Mind must be a substantial
   existence: such then is that [Soul] which circles about the Divine
   Mind, its light, its image inseparably attached to it: on the upper
   level united with it, filled from it, enjoying it, participant in its
   nature, intellective with it, but on the lower level in contact with
   the realm beneath itself, or, rather, generating in turn an offspring
   which must lie beneath; of this lower we will treat later; so far we
   deal still with the Divine.

   8. This is the explanation of Plato's Triplicity, in the passage where
   he names as the Primals the Beings gathered about the King of All, and
   establishes a Secondary containing the Secondaries, and a Third
   containing the Tertiaries.

   He teaches, also, that there is an author of the Cause, that is of the
   Intellectual-Principle, which to him is the Creator who made the Soul,
   as he tells us, in the famous mixing bowl. This author of the causing
   principle, of the divine mind, is to him the Good, that which
   transcends the Intellectual-Principle and transcends Being: often too
   he uses the term "The Idea" to indicate Being and the Divine Mind. Thus
   Plato knows the order of generation -- from the Good, the
   Intellectual-Principle; from the Intellectual-Principle, the Soul.
   These teachings are, therefore, no novelties, no inventions of today,
   but long since stated, if not stressed; our doctrine here is the
   explanation of an earlier and can show the antiquity of these opinions
   on the testimony of Plato himself.

   Earlier, Parmenides made some approach to the doctrine in identifying
   Being with Intellectual-Principle while separating Real Being from the
   realm of sense.

   "Knowing and Being are one thing he says, and this unity is to him
   motionless in spite of the intellection he attributes to it: to
   preserve its unchanging identity he excludes all bodily movement from
   it; and he compares it to a huge sphere in that it holds and envelops
   all existence and that its intellection is not an outgoing act but
   internal. Still, with all his affirmation of unity, his own writings
   lay him open to the reproach that his unity turns out to be a
   multiplicity.

   The Platonic Parmenides is more exact; the distinction is made between
   the Primal One, a strictly pure Unity, and a secondary One which is a
   One-Many and a third which is a One-and-many; thus he too is in
   accordance with our thesis of the Three Kinds.

   9. Anaxagoras, again, in his assertion of a Mind pure and unmixed,
   affirms a simplex First and a sundered One, though writing long ago he
   failed in precision.

   Heraclitus, with his sense of bodily forms as things of ceaseless
   process and passage, knows the One as eternal and intellectual.

   In Empedocles, similarly, we have a dividing principle, "Strife," set
   against "Friendship" -- which is The One and is to him bodiless, while
   the elements represent Matter.

   Later there is Aristotle; he begins by making the First transcendent
   and intellective but cancels that primacy by supposing it to have
   self-intellection. Further he affirms a multitude of other intellective
   beings -- as many indeed as there are orbs in the heavens; one such
   principle as in -- over to every orb -- and thus his account of the
   Intellectual Realm differs from Plato's and, failing reason, he brings
   in necessity; though whatever reasons he had alleged there would always
   have been the objection that it would be more reasonable that all the
   spheres, as contributory to one system, should look to a unity, to the
   First.

   We are obliged also to ask whether to Aristotle's mind all Intellectual
   Beings spring from one, and that one their First; or whether the
   Principles in the Intellectual are many.

   If from one, then clearly the Intellectual system will be analogous to
   that of the universe of sense-sphere encircling sphere, with one, the
   outermost, dominating all -- the First [in the Intellectual] will
   envelop the entire scheme and will be an Intellectual [or Archetypal]
   Kosmos; and as in our universe the spheres are not empty but the first
   sphere is thick with stars and none without them, so, in the
   Intellectual Kosmos, those principles of Movement will envelop a
   multitude of Beings, and that world will be the realm of the greater
   reality.

   If on the contrary each is a principle, then the effective powers
   become a matter of chance; under what compulsion are they to hold
   together and act with one mind towards that work of unity, the harmony
   of the entire heavenly system? Again what can make it necessary that
   the material bodies of the heavenly system be equal in number to the
   Intellectual moving principles, and how can these incorporeal Beings be
   numerically many when there is no Matter to serve as the basis of
   difference?

   For these reasons the ancient philosophers that ranged themselves most
   closely to the school of Pythagoras and of his later followers and to
   that of Pherekudes, have insisted upon this Nature, some developing the
   subject in their writings while others treated of it merely in
   unwritten discourses, some no doubt ignoring it entirely.

   10. We have shown the inevitability of certain convictions as to the
   scheme of things:

   There exists a Principle which transcends Being; this is The One, whose
   nature we have sought to establish in so far as such matters lend
   themselves to proof. Upon The One follows immediately the Principle
   which is at once Being and the Intellectual-Principle. Third comes the
   Principle, Soul.

   Now just as these three exist for the system of Nature, so, we must
   hold, they exist for ourselves. I am not speaking of the material order
   -- all that is separable -- but of what lies beyond the sense realm in
   the same way as the Primals are beyond all the heavens; I mean the
   corresponding aspect of man, what Plato calls the Interior Man.

   Thus our soul, too, is a divine thing, belonging to another order than
   sense; such is all that holds the rank of soul, but [above the
   life-principle] there is the soul perfected as containing
   Intellectual-Principle with its double phase, reasoning and giving the
   power to reason. The reasoning phase of the soul, needing no bodily
   organ for its thinking but maintaining, in purity, its distinctive Act
   that its thought may be uncontaminated -- this we cannot err in
   placing, separate and not mingled into body, within the first
   Intellectual. We may not seek any point of space in which to seat it;
   it must be set outside of all space: its distinct quality, its
   separateness, its immateriality, demand that it be a thing alone,
   untouched by all of the bodily order. This is why we read of the
   universe that the Demiurge cast the soul around it from without --
   understand that phase of soul which is permanently seated in the
   Intellectual -- and of ourselves that the charioteer's head reaches
   upwards towards the heights.

   The admonition to sever soul from body is not, of course, to be
   understood spatially -- that separation stands made in Nature -- the
   reference is to holding our rank, to use of our thinking, to an
   attitude of alienation from the body in the effort to lead up and
   attach to the over-world, equally with the other, that phase of soul
   seated here and, alone, having to do with body, creating, moulding,
   spending its care upon it.

   11. Since there is a Soul which reasons upon the right and good -- for
   reasoning is an enquiry into the rightness and goodness of this rather
   than that -- there must exist some permanent Right, the source and
   foundation of this reasoning in our soul; how, else, could any such
   discussion be held? Further, since the soul's attention to these
   matters is intermittent, there must be within us an
   Intellectual-Principle acquainted with that Right not by momentary act
   but in permanent possession. Similarly there must be also the principle
   of this principle, its cause, God. This Highest cannot be divided and
   allotted, must remain intangible but not bound to space, it may be
   present at many points, wheresoever there is anything capable of
   accepting one of its manifestations; thus a centre is an independent
   unity; everything within the circle has its term at the centre; and to
   the centre the radii bring each their own. Within our nature is such a
   centre by which we grasp and are linked and held; and those of us are
   firmly in the Supreme whose collective tendency is There.

   12. Possessed of such powers, how does it happen that we do not lay
   hold of them, but for the most part, let these high activities go idle
   -- some, even, of us never bringing them in any degree to effect?

   The answer is that all the Divine Beings are unceasingly about their
   own act, the Intellectual-Principle and its Prior always self-intent;
   and so, too, the soul maintains its unfailing movement; for not all
   that passes in the soul is, by that fact, perceptible; we know just as
   much as impinges upon the faculty of sense. Any activity not
   transmitted to the sensitive faculty has not traversed the entire soul:
   we remain unaware because the human being includes sense-perception;
   man is not merely a part [the higher part] of the soul but the total.

   None the less every being of the order of soul is in continuous
   activity as long as life holds, continuously executing to itself its
   characteristic act: knowledge of the act depends upon transmission and
   perception. If there is to be perception of what is thus present, we
   must turn the perceptive faculty inward and hold it to attention there.
   Hoping to hear a desired voice, we let all others pass and are alert
   for the coming at last of that most welcome of sounds: so here, we must
   let the hearings of sense go by, save for sheer necessity, and keep the
   soul's perception bright and quick to the sounds from above.
     __________________________________________________________________

  SECOND TRACTATE.

  THE ORIGIN AND ORDER OF THE BEINGS.
  FOLLOWING ON THE FIRST.

   1. The One is all things and no one of them; the source of all things
   is not all things; all things are its possession -- running back, so to
   speak, to it -- or, more correctly, not yet so, they will be.

   But a universe from an unbroken unity, in which there appears no
   diversity, not even duality?

   It is precisely because that is nothing within the One that all things
   are from it: in order that Being may be brought about, the source must
   be no Being but Being's generator, in what is to be thought of as the
   primal act of generation. Seeking nothing, possessing nothing, lacking
   nothing, the One is perfect and, in our metaphor, has overflowed, and
   its exuberance has produced the new: this product has turned again to
   its begetter and been filled and has become its contemplator and so an
   Intellectual-Principle.

   That station towards the one [the fact that something exists in
   presence of the One] establishes Being; that vision directed upon the
   One establishes the Intellectual-Principle; standing towards the One to
   the end of vision, it is simultaneously Intellectual-Principle and
   Being; and, attaining resemblance in virtue of this vision, it repeats
   the act of the One in pouring forth a vast power.

   This second outflow is a Form or Idea representing the Divine Intellect
   as the Divine Intellect represented its own prior, The One.

   This active power sprung from essence [from the Intellectual-Principle
   considered as Being] is Soul.

   Soul arises as the idea and act of the motionless
   Intellectual-Principle -- which itself sprang from its own motionless
   prior -- but the soul's operation is not similarly motionless; its
   image is generated from its movement. It takes fulness by looking to
   its source; but it generates its image by adopting another, a downward,
   movement.

   This image of Soul is Sense and Nature, the vegetal principle.

   Nothing, however, is completely severed from its prior. Thus the human
   Soul appears to reach away as far down as to the vegetal order: in some
   sense it does, since the life of growing things is within its province;
   but it is not present entire; when it has reached the vegetal order it
   is there in the sense that having moved thus far downwards it produces
   -- by its outgoing and its tendency towards the less good -- another
   hypostasis or form of being just as its prior (the loftier phase of the
   Soul) is produced from the Intellectual-Principle which yet remains in
   untroubled self-possession.

   2. To resume: there is from the first principle to ultimate an outgoing
   in which unfailingly each principle retains its own seat while its
   offshoot takes another rank, a lower, though on the other hand every
   being is in identity with its prior as long as it holds that contact.

   In the case of soul entering some vegetal form, what is there is one
   phase, the more rebellious and less intellectual, outgone to that
   extreme; in a soul entering an animal, the faculty of sensation has
   been dominant and brought it there; in soul entering man, the movement
   outward has either been wholly of its reasoning part or has come from
   the Intellectual-Principle in the sense that the soul, possessing that
   principle as immanent to its being, has an inborn desire of
   intellectual activity and of movement in general.

   But, looking more minutely into the matter, when shoots or topmost
   boughs are lopped from some growing thing, where goes the soul that was
   present in them? Simply, whence it came: soul never knew spatial
   separation and therefore is always within the source. If you cut the
   root to pieces, or burn it, where is the life that was present there?
   In the soul, which never went outside of itself.

   No doubt, despite this permanence, the soul must have been in something
   if it reascends; and if it does not, it is still somewhere; it is in
   some other vegetal soul: but all this means merely that it is not
   crushed into some one spot; if a Soul-power reascends, it is within the
   Soul-power preceding it; that in turn can be only in the soul-power
   prior again, the phase reaching upwards to the Intellectual-Principle.
   Of course nothing here must be understood spatially: Soul never was in
   space; and the Divine Intellect, again, is distinguished from soul as
   being still more free.

   Soul thus is nowhere but in the Principle which has that characteristic
   existence at once nowhere and everywhere.

   If the soul on its upward path has halted midway before wholly
   achieving the supreme heights, it has a mid-rank life and has centred
   itself upon the mid-phase of its being. All in that mid-region is
   Intellectual-Principle not wholly itself -- nothing else because
   deriving thence [and therefore of that name and rank], yet not that
   because the Intellectual-Principle in giving it forth is not merged
   into it.

   There exists, thus, a life, as it were, of huge extension, a total in
   which each several part differs from its next, all making a
   self-continuous whole under a law of discrimination by which the
   various forms of things arise with no effacement of any prior in its
   secondary.

   But does this Soul-phase in the vegetal order, produce nothing?

   It engenders precisely the Kind in which it is thus present: how, is a
   question to be handled from another starting-point.
     __________________________________________________________________

  THIRD TRACTATE.

  THE KNOWING HYPOSTASES AND THE
  TRANSCENDENT.

   1. Are we to think that a being knowing itself must contain diversity,
   that self-knowledge can be affirmed only when some one phase of the
   self perceives other phases, and that therefore an absolutely simplex
   entity would be equally incapable of introversion and of
   self-awareness?

   No: a being that has no parts or phases may have this consciousness; in
   fact there would be no real self-knowing in an entity presented as
   knowing itself in virtue of being a compound -- some single element in
   it perceiving other elements -- as we may know our own form and entire
   bodily organism by sense-perception: such knowing does not cover the
   whole field; the knowing element has not had the required cognisance at
   once of its associates and of itself; this is not the self-knower asked
   for; it is merely something that knows something else.

   Either we must exhibit the self-knowing of an uncompounded being -- and
   show how that is possible -- or abandon the belief that any being can
   possess veritable self-cognition.

   To abandon the belief is not possible in view of the many absurdities
   thus entailed.

   It would be already absurd enough to deny this power to the soul or
   mind, but the very height of absurdity to deny it to the nature of the
   Intellectual-Principle, presented thus as knowing the rest of things
   but not attaining to knowledge, or even awareness, of itself.

   It is the province of sense and in some degree of understanding and
   judgement, but not of the Intellectual-Principle, to handle the
   external, though whether the Intellectual-Principle holds the knowledge
   of these things is a question to be examined, but it is obvious that
   the Intellectual-Principle must have knowledge of the Intellectual
   objects. Now, can it know those objects alone or must it not
   simultaneously know itself, the being whose function it is to know just
   those things? Can it have self-knowledge in the sense [dismissed above
   as inadequate] of knowing its content while it ignores itself? Can it
   be aware of knowing its members and yet remain in ignorance of its own
   knowing self? Self and content must be simultaneously present: the
   method and degree of this knowledge we must now consider.

   2. We begin with the soul, asking whether it is to be allowed
   self-knowledge and what the knowing principle in it would be and how
   operating.

   The sense-principle in it we may at once decide, takes cognisance only
   of the external; even in any awareness of events within the body it
   occupies, this is still the perception of something external to a
   principle dealing with those bodily conditions not as within but as
   beneath itself.

   The reasoning-principle in the Soul acts upon the representations
   standing before it as the result of sense-perception; these it judges,
   combining, distinguishing: or it may also observe the impressions, so
   to speak, rising from the Intellectual-Principle, and has the same
   power of handling these; and reasoning will develop to wisdom where it
   recognizes the new and late-coming impressions [those of sense] and
   adapts them, so to speak, to those it holds from long before -- the act
   which may be described as the soul's Reminiscence.

   So far as this, the efficacy of the Intellectual-Principle in the Soul
   certainly reaches; but is there also introversion and self-cognition or
   is that power to be reserved strictly for the Divine Mind?

   If we accord self-knowing to this phase of the soul we make it an
   Intellectual-Principle and will have to show what distinguishes it from
   its prior; if we refuse it self-knowing, all our thought brings us step
   by step to some principle which has this power, and we must discover
   what such self-knowing consists in. If, again, we do allow
   self-knowledge in the lower we must examine the question of degree; for
   if there is no difference of degree, then the reasoning principle in
   soul is the Intellectual-Principle unalloyed.

   We ask, then, whether the understanding principle in the soul has
   equally the power of turning inwards upon itself or whether it has no
   more than that of comprehending the impressions, superior and inferior,
   which it receives.

   The first stage is to discover what this comprehension is.

   3. Sense sees a man and transmits the impression to the understanding.
   What does the understanding say? It has nothing to say as yet; it
   accepts and waits; unless, rather, it questions within itself "Who is
   this?" -- someone it has met before -- and then, drawing on memory,
   says, "Socrates."

   If it should go on to develop the impression received, it distinguishes
   various elements in what the representative faculty has set before it;
   supposing it to say "Socrates, if the man is good," then, while it has
   spoken upon information from the senses, its total pronouncement is its
   own; it contains within itself a standard of good.

   But how does it thus contain the good within itself?

   It is, itself, of the nature of the good and it has been strengthened
   still towards the perception of all that is good by the irradiation of
   the Intellectual-Principle upon it; for this pure phase of the soul
   welcomes to itself the images implanted from its prior.

   But why may we not distinguish this understanding phase as
   Intellectual-Principle and take soul to consist of the later phases
   from the sensitive downwards?

   Because all the activities mentioned are within the scope of a
   reasoning faculty, and reasoning is characteristically the function of
   soul.

   Why not, however, absolve the question by assigning self-cognisance to
   this phase?

   Because we have allotted to soul the function of dealing -- in thought
   and in multiform action -- with the external, and we hold that
   observation of self and of the content of self must belong to
   Intellectual-Principle.

   If any one says, "Still; what precludes the reasoning soul from
   observing its own content by some special faculty?" he is no longer
   posting a principle of understanding or of reasoning but, simply,
   bringing in the Intellectual-Principle unalloyed.

   But what precludes the Intellectual-Principle from being present,
   unalloyed, within the soul? Nothing, we admit; but are we entitled
   therefore to think of it as a phase of soul?

   We cannot describe it as belonging to the soul though we do describe it
   as our Intellectual-Principle, something distinct from the
   understanding, advanced above it, and yet ours even though we cannot
   include it among soul-phases: it is ours and not ours; and therefore we
   use it sometimes and sometimes not, whereas we always have use of the
   understanding; the Intellectual-Principle is ours when we act by it,
   not ours when we neglect it.

   But what is this acting by it? Does it mean that we become the
   Intellectual-Principle so that our utterance is the utterance of the
   Intellectual-Principle, or that we represent it?

   We are not the Intellectual-Principle; we represent it in virtue of
   that highest reasoning faculty which draws upon it.

   Still; we perceive by means of the perceptive faculty and are,
   ourselves, the percipients: may we not say the same of the intellective
   act?

   No: our reasoning is our own; we ourselves think the thoughts that
   occupy the understanding -- for this is actually the We -- but the
   operation of the Intellectual-Principle enters from above us as that of
   the sensitive faculty from below; the We is the soul at its highest,
   the mid-point between two powers, between the sensitive principle,
   inferior to us, and the intellectual principle superior. We think of
   the perceptive act as integral to ourselves because our
   sense-perception is uninterrupted; we hesitate as to the
   Intellectual-Principle both because we are not always occupied with it
   and because it exists apart, not a principle inclining to us but one to
   which we incline when we choose to look upwards.

   The sensitive principle is our scout; the Intellectual-Principle our
   King.

   4. But we, too, are king when we are moulded to the
   Intellectual-Principle.

   That correspondence may be brought about in two ways: either the radii
   from that centre are traced upon us to be our law or we are filled full
   of the Divine Mind, which again may have become to us a thing seen and
   felt as a presence.

   Hence our self-knowing comes to the knowing of all the rest of our
   being in virtue of this thing patently present; or by that power itself
   communicating to us its own power of self-knowing; or by our becoming
   identical with that principle of knowledge.

   Thus the self-knower is a double person: there is the one that takes
   cognisance of the principle in virtue of which understanding occurs in
   the soul or mind; and there is the higher, knowing himself by the
   Intellectual-Principle with which he becomes identical: this latter
   knows the self as no longer man but as a being that has become
   something other through and through: he has thrown himself as one thing
   over into the superior order, taking with him only that better part of
   the soul which alone is winged for the Intellectual Act and gives the
   man, once established There, the power to appropriate what he has seen.

   We can scarcely suppose this understanding faculty to be unaware that
   it has understanding; that it takes cognisance of things external; that
   in its judgements it decides by the rules and standards within itself
   held directly from the Intellectual-Principle; that there is something
   higher than itself, something which, moreover, it has no need to seek
   but fully possesses. What can we conceive to escape the self-knowledge
   of a principle which admittedly knows the place it holds and the work
   it has to do? It affirms that it springs from Intellectual-Principle
   whose second and image it is, that it holds all within itself, the
   universe of things, engraved, so to say, upon it as all is held There
   by the eternal engraver. Aware so far of itself, can it be supposed to
   halt at that? Are we to suppose that all we can do is to apply a
   distinct power of our nature and come thus to awareness of that
   Intellectual-Principle as aware of itself? Or may we not appropriate
   that principle -- which belongs to us as we to it -- and thus attain to
   awareness, at once, of it and of ourselves? Yes: this is the necessary
   way if we are to experience the self-knowledge vested in the
   Intellectual-Principle. And a man becomes Intellectual-Principle when,
   ignoring all other phases of his being, he sees through that only and
   sees only that and so knows himself by means of the self -- in other
   words attains the self-knowledge which the Intellectual-Principle
   possesses.

   5. Does it all come down, then, to one phase of the self knowing
   another phase?

   That would be a case of knower distinguished from known, and would not
   be self-knowing.

   What, then, if the total combination were supposed to be of one piece,
   knower quite undistinguished from known, so that, seeing any given part
   of itself as identical with itself, it sees itself by means of itself,
   knower and known thus being entirely without differentiation?

   To begin with, the distinction in one self thus suggested is a strange
   phenomenon. How is the self to make the partition? The thing cannot
   happen of itself. And, again, which phase makes it? The phase that
   decides to be the knower or that which is to be the known? Then how can
   the knowing phase know itself in the known when it has chosen to be the
   knower and put itself apart from the known? In such self-knowledge by
   sundering it can be aware only of the object, not of the agent; it will
   not know its entire content, or itself as an integral whole; it knows
   the phase seen but not the seeing phase and thus has knowledge of
   something else, not self-knowledge.

   In order to perfect self-knowing it must bring over from itself the
   knowing phase as well: seeing subject and seen objects must be present
   as one thing. Now if in this coalescence of seeing subject with seen
   objects, the objects were merely representations of the reality, the
   subject would not possess the realities: if it is to possess them it
   must do so not by seeing them as the result of any self-division but by
   knowing them, containing them, before any self-division occurs.

   At that, the object known must be identical with the knowing act [or
   agent], the Intellectual-Principle, therefore, identical with the
   Intellectual Realm. And in fact, if this identity does not exist,
   neither does truth; the Principle that should contain realities is
   found to contain a transcript, something different from the realities;
   that constitutes non-Truth; Truth cannot apply to something conflicting
   with itself; what it affirms it must also be.

   Thus we find that the Intellectual-Principle, the Intellectual Realm
   and Real Being constitute one thing, which is the Primal Being; the
   primal Intellectual-Principle is that which contains the realities or,
   rather, which is identical with them.

   But taking Primal Intellection and its intellectual object to be a
   unity, how does that give an Intellective Being knowing itself? An
   intellection enveloping its object or identical with it is far from
   exhibiting the Intellectual-Principle as self-knowing.

   All turns on the identity. The intellectual object is itself an
   activity, not a mere potentiality; it is not lifeless; nor are the life
   and intellection brought into it as into something naturally devoid of
   them, some stone or other dead matter; no, the intellectual object is
   essentially existent, the primal reality. As an active force, the first
   activity, it must be, also itself, the noblest intellection,
   intellection possessing real being since it is entirely true; and such
   an intellection, primal and primally existent, can be no other than the
   primal principle of Intellection: for that primal principle is no
   potentiality and cannot be an agent distinct from its act and thus,
   once more, possessing its essential being as a mere potentiality. As an
   act -- and one whose very being is an act -- it must be
   undistinguishably identical with its act: but Being and the
   Intellectual object are also identical with that act; therefore the
   Intellectual-Principle, its exercise of intellection and the object of
   intellection all are identical. Given its intellection identical with
   intellectual object and the object identical with the Principle itself,
   it cannot but have self-knowledge: its intellection operates by the
   intellectual act which is itself upon the intellectual object which
   similarly is itself. It possesses self-knowing, thus, on every count;
   the act is itself; and the object seen in that act -- self, is itself.

   6. Thus we have shown that there exists that which in the strictest
   sense possesses self-knowing.

   This self-knowing agent, perfect in the Intellectual-Principle, is
   modified in the Soul.

   The difference is that, while the soul knows itself as within something
   else, the Intellectual-Principle knows itself as self-depending, knows
   all its nature and character, and knows by right of its own being and
   by simple introversion. When it looks upon the authentic existences it
   is looking upon itself; its vision as its effective existence, and this
   efficacy is itself since the Intellectual-Principle and the
   Intellectual Act are one: this is an integral seeing itself by its
   entire being, not a part seeing by a part.

   But has our discussion issued in an Intellectual-Principle having a
   persuasive activity [furnishing us with probability]?

   No: it brings compulsion not persuasion; compulsion belongs to the
   Intellectual-Principle, persuasion to the soul or mind, and we seem to
   desire to be persuaded rather than to see the truth in the pure
   intellect.

   As long as we were Above, collected within the Intellectual nature, we
   were satisfied; we were held in the intellectual act; we had vision
   because we drew all into unity -- for the thinker in us was the
   Intellectual-Principle telling us of itself -- and the soul or mind was
   motionless, assenting to that act of its prior. But now that we are
   once more here -- living in the secondary, the soul -- we seek for
   persuasive probabilities: it is through the image we desire to know the
   archetype.

   Our way is to teach our soul how the Intellectual-Principle exercises
   self-vision; the phase thus to be taught is that which already touches
   the intellective order, that which we call the understanding or
   intelligent soul, indicating by the very name that it is already of
   itself in some degree an Intellectual-Principle or that it holds its
   peculiar power through and from that Principle. This phase must be
   brought to understand by what means it has knowledge of the thing it
   sees and warrant for what it affirms: if it became what it affirms, it
   would by that fact possess self-knowing. All its vision and affirmation
   being in the Supreme or deriving from it -- There where itself also is
   -- it will possess self-knowledge by its right as a Reason-Principle,
   claiming its kin and bringing all into accord with the divine imprint
   upon it.

   The soul therefore [to attain self-knowledge] has only to set this
   image [that is to say, its highest phase] alongside the veritable
   Intellectual-Principle which we have found to be identical with the
   truths constituting the objects of intellection, the world of Primals
   and Reality: for this Intellectual-Principle, by very definition,
   cannot be outside of itself, the Intellectual Reality: self-gathered
   and unalloyed, it is Intellectual-Principle through all the range of
   its being -- for unintelligent intelligence is not possible -- and thus
   it possesses of necessity self-knowing, as a being immanent to itself
   and one having for function and essence to be purely and solely
   Intellectual-Principle. This is no doer; the doer, not self-intent but
   looking outward, will have knowledge, in some kind, of the external,
   but, if wholly of this practical order, need have no self-knowledge;
   where, on the contrary, there is no action -- and of course the pure
   Intellectual-Principle cannot be straining after any absent good -- the
   intention can be only towards the self; at once self-knowing becomes
   not merely plausible but inevitable; what else could living signify in
   a being immune from action and existing in Intellect?

   7. The contemplating of God, we might answer.

   But to admit its knowing God is to be compelled to admit its
   self-knowing. It will know what it holds from God, what God has given
   forth or may; with this knowledge, it knows itself at the stroke, for
   it is itself one of those given things -- in fact is all of them.
   Knowing God and His power, then, it knows itself, since it comes from
   Him and carries His power upon it; if, because here the act of vision
   is identical with the object, it is unable to see God clearly, then all
   the more, by the equation of seeing and seen, we are driven back upon
   that self-seeing and self-knowing in which seeing and thing seen are
   undistinguishably one thing.

   And what else is there to attribute to it?

   Repose, no doubt; but, to an Intellectual-Principle, Repose is not an
   abdication from intellect; its Repose is an Act, the act of abstention
   from the alien: in all forms of existence repose from the alien leaves
   the characteristic activity intact, especially where the Being is not
   merely potential but fully realized.

   In the Intellectual-Principle, the Being is an Act and in the absence
   of any other object it must be self-directed; by this self-intellection
   it holds its Act within itself and upon itself; all that can emanate
   from it is produced by this self-centering and self-intention; first --
   self-gathered, it then gives itself or gives something in its likeness;
   fire must first be self-centred and be fire, true to fire's natural
   Act; then it may reproduce itself elsewhere.

   Once more, then; the Intellectual-Principle is a self-intent activity,
   but soul has the double phase, one inner, intent upon the
   Intellectual-Principle, the other outside it and facing to the
   external; by the one it holds the likeness to its source; by the other,
   even in its unlikeness, it still comes to likeness in this sphere, too,
   by virtue of action and production; in its action it still
   contemplates, and its production produces Ideal-forms -- divine
   intellections perfectly wrought out -- so that all its creations are
   representations of the divine Intellection and of the divine Intellect,
   moulded upon the archetype, of which all are emanations and images, the
   nearer more true, the very latest preserving some faint likeness of the
   source.

   8. Now comes the question what sort of thing does the
   Intellectual-Principle see in seeing the Intellectual Realm and what in
   seeing itself?

   We are not to look for an Intellectual realm reminding us of the colour
   or shape to be seen on material objects: the intellectual antedates all
   such things; and even in our sphere the production is very different
   from the Reason-Principle in the seeds from which it is produced. The
   seed principles are invisible and the beings of the Intellectual still
   more characteristically so; the Intellectuals are of one same nature
   with the Intellectual Realm which contains them, just as the
   Reason-Principle in the seed is identical with the soul, or
   life-principle, containing it.

   But the Soul (considered as apart from the Intellectual-Principle) has
   no vision of what it thus contains, for it is not the producer but,
   like the Reason-Principles also, an image of its source: that source is
   the brilliant, the authentic, the primarily existent, the thing
   self-sprung and self-intent; but its image, soul, is a thing which can
   have no permanence except by attachment, by living in that other; the
   very nature of an image is that, as a secondary, it shall have its
   being in something else, if at all it exist apart from its original.
   Hence this image (soul) has not vision, for it has not the necessary
   light, and, if it should see, then, as finding its completion
   elsewhere, it sees another, not itself.

   In the pure Intellectual there is nothing of this: the vision and the
   envisioned are a unity; the seen is as the seeing and seeing as seen.

   What, then, is there that can pronounce upon the nature of this
   all-unity?

   That which sees: and to see is the function of the
   Intellectual-Principle. Even in our own sphere [we have a parallel to
   this self-vision of a unity], our vision is light or rather becomes one
   with light, and it sees light for it sees colours. In the intellectual,
   the vision sees not through some medium but by and through itself
   alone, for its object is not external: by one light it sees another not
   through any intermediate agency; a light sees a light, that is to say a
   thing sees itself. This light shining within the soul enlightens it;
   that is, it makes the soul intellective, working it into likeness with
   itself, the light above.

   Think of the traces of this light upon the soul, then say to yourself
   that such, and more beautiful and broader and more radiant, is the
   light itself; thus you will approach to the nature of the
   Intellectual-Principle and the Intellectual Realm, for it is this
   light, itself lit from above, which gives the soul its brighter life.

   It is not the source of the generative life of the soul which, on the
   contrary, it draws inward, preserving it from such diffusion, holding
   it to the love of the splendour of its Prior.

   Nor does it give the life of perception and sensation, for that looks
   to the external and to what acts most vigorously upon the senses
   whereas one accepting that light of truth may be said no longer to see
   the visible, but the very contrary.

   This means in sum that the life the soul takes thence is an
   intellective life, a trace of the life in the [divine] Intellect, in
   which alone the authentic exists.

   The life in the Divine Intellect is also an Act: it is the primal light
   outlamping to itself primarily, its own torch; light-giver and lit at
   once; the authentic intellectual object, knowing at once and known,
   seen to itself and needing no other than itself to see by,
   self-sufficing to the vision, since what it sees it is; known to us by
   that very same light, our knowledge of it attained through itself, for
   from nowhere else could we find the means of telling of it. By its
   nature, its self-vision is the clearer but, using it as our medium, we
   too may come to see by it.

   In the strength of such considerations we lead up our own soul to the
   Divine, so that it poses itself as an image of that Being, its life
   becoming an imprint and a likeness of the Highest, its every act of
   thought making it over into the Divine and the Intellectual.

   If the soul is questioned as to the nature of that
   Intellectual-Principle -- the perfect and all-embracing, the primal
   self-knower -- it has but to enter into that Principle, or to sink all
   its activity into that, and at once it shows itself to be in effective
   possession of those priors whose memory it never lost: thus, as an
   image of the Intellectual-Principle, it can make itself the medium by
   which to attain some vision of it; it draws upon that within itself
   which is most closely resemblant, as far as resemblance is possible
   between divine Intellect and any phase of soul.

   9. In order, then, to know what the Divine Mind is, we must observe
   soul and especially its most God-like phase.

   One certain way to this knowledge is to separate first, the man from
   the body -- yourself, that is, from your body -- next to put aside that
   soul which moulded the body, and, very earnestly, the system of sense
   with desires and impulses and every such futility, all setting
   definitely towards the mortal: what is left is the phase of the soul
   which we have declared to be an image of the Divine Intellect,
   retaining some light from that sun, while it pours downward upon the
   sphere of magnitudes [that is, of Matter] the light playing about
   itself which is generated from its own nature.

   Of course we do not pretend that the sun's light [as the analogy might
   imply] remains a self-gathered and sun-centred thing: it is at once
   outrushing and indwelling; it strikes outward continuously, lap after
   lap, until it reaches us upon our earth: we must take it that all the
   light, including that which plays about the sun's orb, has travelled;
   otherwise we would have a void expanse, that of the space -- which is
   material -- next to the sun's orb. The Soul, on the contrary -- a light
   springing from the Divine Mind and shining about it -- is in closest
   touch with that source; it is not in transit but remains centred there,
   and, in likeness to that principle, it has no place: the light of the
   sun is actually in the air, but the soul is clean of all such contact
   so that its immunity is patent to itself and to any other of the same
   order.

   And by its own characteristic act, though not without reasoning
   process, it knows the nature of the Intellectual-Principle which, on
   its side, knows itself without need of reasoning, for it is ever
   self-present whereas we become so by directing our soul towards it; our
   life is broken and there are many lives, but that principle needs no
   changings of life or of things; the lives it brings to being are for
   others not for itself: it cannot need the inferior; nor does it for
   itself produce the less when it possesses or is the all, nor the images
   when it possesses or is the prototype.

   Anyone not of the strength to lay hold of the first soul, that
   possessing pure intellection, must grasp that which has to do with our
   ordinary thinking and thence ascend: if even this prove too hard, let
   him turn to account the sensitive phase which carries the ideal forms
   of the less fine degree, that phase which, too, with its powers, is
   immaterial and lies just within the realm of Ideal-principles.

   One may even, if it seem necessary, begin as low as the reproductive
   soul and its very production and thence make the ascent, mounting from
   those ultimate ideal principles to the ultimates in the higher sense,
   that is to the primals.

   10. This matter need not be elaborated at present: it suffices to say
   that if the created were all, these ultimates [the higher] need not
   exist: but the Supreme does include primals, the primals because the
   producers. In other words, there must be, with the made, the making
   source; and, unless these are to be identical, there will be need of
   some link between them. Similarly, this link which is the
   Intellectual-Principle demands yet a Transcendent. If we are asked why
   this Transcendent also should not have self-vision, our answer is that
   it has no need of vision; but this we will discuss later: for the
   moment we go back, since the question at issue is gravely important.

   We repeat that the Intellectual-Principle must have, actually has,
   self-vision, firstly because it has multiplicity, next because it
   exists for the external and therefore must be a seeing power, one
   seeing that external; in fact its very essence is vision. Given some
   external, there must be vision; and if there be nothing external the
   Intellectual-Principle [Divine Mind] exists in vain. Unless there is
   something beyond bare unity, there can be no vision: vision must
   converge with a visible object. And this which the seer is to see can
   be only a multiple, no undistinguishable unity; nor could a universal
   unity find anything upon which to exercise any act; all, one and
   desolate, would be utter stagnation; in so far as there is action,
   there is diversity. If there be no distinctions, what is there to do,
   what direction in which to move? An agent must either act upon the
   extern or be a multiple and so able to act upon itself: making no
   advance towards anything other than itself, it is motionless and where
   it could know only blank fixity it can know nothing.

   The intellective power, therefore, when occupied with the intellectual
   act, must be in a state of duality, whether one of the two elements
   stand actually outside or both lie within: the intellectual act will
   always comport diversity as well as the necessary identity, and in the
   same way its characteristic objects [the Ideas] must stand to the
   Intellectual-Principle as at once distinct and identical. This applies
   equally to the single object; there can be no intellection except of
   something containing separable detail and, since the object is a
   Reason-principle [a discriminated Idea] it has the necessary element of
   multiplicity. The Intellectual-Principle, thus, is informed of itself
   by the fact of being a multiple organ of vision, an eye receptive of
   many illuminated objects. If it had to direct itself to a memberless
   unity, it would be dereasoned: what could it say or know of such an
   object? The self-affirmation of [even] a memberless unity implies the
   repudiation of all that does not enter into the character: in other
   words, it must be multiple as a preliminary to being itself.

   Then, again, in the assertion "I am this particular thing," either the
   "particular thing" is distinct from the assertor -- and there is a
   false statement -- or it is included within it, and, at once,
   multiplicity is asserted: otherwise the assertion is "I am what I am,"
   or "I am I."

   If it be no more than a simple duality able to say "I and that other
   phase," there is already multiplicity, for there is distinction and
   ground of distinction, there is number with all its train of separate
   things.

   In sum, then, a knowing principle must handle distinct items: its
   object must, at the moment of cognition, contain diversity; otherwise
   the thing remains unknown; there is mere conjunction, such a contact,
   without affirmation or comprehension, as would precede knowledge, the
   intellect not yet in being, the impinging agent not percipient.

   Similarly the knowing principle itself cannot remain simplex,
   especially in the act of self-knowing: all silent though its
   self-perception be, it is dual to itself. Of course it has no need of
   minute self-handling since it has nothing to learn by its intellective
   act; before it is [effectively] Intellect, it holds knowledge of its
   own content. Knowledge implies desire, for it is, so to speak,
   discovery crowning a search; the utterly undifferentiated remains
   self-centred and makes no enquiry about that self: anything capable of
   analysing its content, must be a manifold.

   11. Thus the Intellectual-Principle, in the act of knowing the
   Transcendent, is a manifold. It knows the Transcendent in very essence
   but, with all its effort to grasp that prior as a pure unity, it goes
   forth amassing successive impressions, so that, to it, the object
   becomes multiple: thus in its outgoing to its object it is not [fully
   realised] Intellectual-Principle; it is an eye that has not yet seen;
   in its return it is an eye possessed of the multiplicity which it has
   itself conferred: it sought something of which it found the vague
   presentment within itself; it returned with something else, the
   manifold quality with which it has of its own act invested the simplex.

   If it had not possessed a previous impression of the Transcendent, it
   could never have grasped it, but this impression, originally of unity,
   becomes an impression of multiplicity; and the Intellectual-Principle,
   in taking cognisance of that multiplicity, knows the Transcendent and
   so is realized as an eye possessed of its vision.

   It is now Intellectual-Principle since it actually holds its object,
   and holds it by the act of intellection: before, it was no more than a
   tendance, an eye blank of impression: it was in motion towards the
   transcendental; now that it has attained, it has become
   Intellectual-Principle henceforth absorbed; in virtue of this
   intellection it holds the character of Intellectual-Principle, of
   Essential Existence and of Intellectual Act where, previously, not
   possessing the Intellectual Object, it was not Intellectual Perception,
   and, not yet having exercised the Intellectual Act, it was not
   Intellectual-Principle.

   The Principle before all these principles is no doubt the first
   principle of the universe, but not as immanent: immanence is not for
   primal sources but for engendering secondaries; that which stands as
   primal source of everything is not a thing but is distinct from all
   things: it is not, then, a member of the total but earlier than all,
   earlier, thus, than the Intellectual-Principle -- which in fact
   envelops the entire train of things.

   Thus we come, once more, to a Being above the Intellectual-Principle
   and, since the sequent amounts to no less than the All, we recognise,
   again, a Being above the All. This assuredly cannot be one of the
   things to which it is prior. We may not call it "Intellect"; therefore,
   too, we may not call it "the Good," if "the Good" is to be taken in the
   sense of some one member of the universe; if we mean that which
   precedes the universe of things, the name may be allowed.

   The Intellectual-Principle is established in multiplicity; its
   intellection, self-sprung though it be, is in the nature of something
   added to it [some accidental dualism] and makes it multiple: the
   utterly simplex, and therefore first of all beings, must, then,
   transcend the Intellectual-Principle; and, obviously, if this had
   intellection it would no longer transcend the Intellectual-Principle
   but be it, and at once be a multiple.

   12. But why, after all, should it not be such a manifold as long as it
   remains one substantial existence, having the multiplicity not of a
   compound being but of a unity with a variety of activities?

   Now, no doubt, if these various activities are not themselves
   substantial existences -- but merely manifestations of latent
   potentiality -- there is no compound; but, on the other hand, it
   remains incomplete until its substantial existence be expressed in act.
   If its substantial existence consists in its Act, and this Act
   constitutes multiplicity, then its substantial existence will be
   strictly proportioned to the extent of the multiplicity.

   We allow this to be true for the Intellectual-Principle to which we
   have allotted [the multiplicity of] self-knowing; but for the first
   principle of all, never. Before the manifold, there must be The One,
   that from which the manifold rises: in all numerical series, the unit
   is the first.

   But -- we will be answered -- for number, well and good, since the
   suite makes a compound; but in the real beings why must there be a unit
   from which the multiplicity of entities shall proceed?

   Because [failing such a unity] the multiplicity would consist of
   disjointed items, each starting at its own distinct place and moving
   accidentally to serve to a total.

   But, they will tell us, the Activities in question do proceed from a
   unity, from the Intellectual-Principle, a simplex.

   By that they admit the existence of a simplex prior to the Activities;
   and they make the Activities perdurable and class them as substantial
   existences [hypostases]; but as Hypostases they will be distinct from
   their source, which will remain simplex; while its product will in its
   own nature be manifold and dependent upon it.

   Now if these activities arise from some unexplained first activity in
   that principle, then it too contains the manifold: if, on the contrary,
   they are the very earliest activities and the source and cause of any
   multiple product and the means by which that Principle is able, before
   any activity occurs, to remain self-centred, then they are allocated to
   the product of which they are the cause; for this principle is one
   thing, the activities going forth from it are another, since it is not,
   itself, in act. If this be not so, the first act cannot be the
   Intellectual-Principle: the One does not provide for the existence of
   an Intellectual-Principle which thereupon appears; that provision would
   be something [an Hypostasis] intervening between the One and the
   Intellectual-Principle, its offspring. There could, in fact, be no such
   providing in The One, for it was never incomplete; and such provision
   could name nothing that ought to be provided. It cannot be thought to
   possess only some part of its content, and not the whole; nor did
   anything exist to which it could turn in desire. Clearly anything that
   comes into being after it, arises without shaking to its permanence in
   its own habit. It is essential to the existence of any new entity that
   the First remain in self-gathered repose throughout: otherwise, it
   moved before there was motion and had intellectual act before any
   intellection -- unless, indeed, that first act [as motionless and
   without intelligence] was incomplete, nothing more than a tendency. And
   what can we imagine it lights upon to become the object of such a
   tendency?

   The only reasonable explanation of act flowing from it lies in the
   analogy of light from a sun. The entire intellectual order may be
   figured as a kind of light with the One in repose at its summit as its
   King: but this manifestation is not cast out from it: we may think,
   rather, of the One as a light before the light, an eternal irradiation
   resting upon the Intellectual Realm; this, not identical with its
   source, is yet not severed from it nor of so remote a nature as to be
   less than Real-Being; it is no blind thing, but is seeing and knowing,
   the primal knower.

   The One, as transcending Intellect, transcends knowing: above all need,
   it is above the need of the knowing which pertains solely to the
   Secondary Nature. Knowing is a unitary thing, but defined: the first is
   One, but undefined: a defined One would not be the One-absolute: the
   absolute is prior to the definite.

   13. Thus The One is in truth beyond all statement: any affirmation is
   of a thing; but the all-transcending, resting above even the most
   august divine Mind, possesses alone of all true being, and is not a
   thing among things; we can give it no name because that would imply
   predication: we can but try to indicate, in our own feeble way,
   something concerning it: when in our perplexity we object, "Then it is
   without self-perception, without self-consciousness, ignorant of
   itself"; we must remember that we have been considering it only in its
   opposites.

   If we make it knowable, an object of affirmation, we make it a
   manifold; and if we allow intellection in it we make it at that point
   indigent: supposing that in fact intellection accompanies it,
   intellection by it must be superfluous.

   Self-intellection -- which is the truest -- implies the entire
   perception of a total self formed from a variety converging into an
   integral; but the Transcendent knows neither separation of part nor any
   such enquiry; if its intellectual act were directed upon something
   outside, then, the Transcendent would be deficient and the intellection
   faulty.

   The wholly simplex and veritable self-sufficing can be lacking at no
   point: self-intellection begins in that principle which, secondarily
   self-sufficing, yet needs itself and therefore needs to know itself:
   this principle, by its self-presence, achieves its sufficiency in
   virtue of its entire content [it is the all]: it becomes thus competent
   from the total of its being, in the act of living towards itself and
   looking upon itself.

   Consciousness, as the very word indicates, is a conperception, an act
   exercised upon a manifold: and even intellection, earlier [nearer to
   the divine] though it is, implies that the agent turns back upon
   itself, upon a manifold, then. If that agent says no more than "I am a
   being," it speaks [by the implied dualism] as a discoverer of the
   extern; and rightly so, for being is a manifold; when it faces towards
   the unmanifold and says, "I am that being," it misses both itself and
   the being [since the simplex cannot be thus divided into knower and
   known]: if it is [to utter] truth it cannot indicate by "being"
   something like a stone; in the one phrase multiplicity is asserted; for
   the being thus affirmed -- [even] the veritable, as distinguished from
   such a mere container of some trace of being as ought not to be called
   a being since it stands merely as image to archetype -- even this must
   possess multiplicity.

   But will not each item in that multiplicity be an object of
   intellection to us?

   Taken bare and single, no: but Being itself is manifold within itself,
   and whatever else you may name has Being.

   This accepted, it follows that anything that is to be thought of as the
   most utterly simplex of all cannot have self-intellection; to have that
   would mean being multiple. The Transcendent, thus, neither knows itself
   nor is known in itself.

   14. How, then, do we ourselves come to be speaking of it?

   No doubt we deal with it, but we do not state it; we have neither
   knowledge nor intellection of it.

   But in what sense do we even deal with it when we have no hold upon it?

   We do not, it is true, grasp it by knowledge, but that does not mean
   that we are utterly void of it; we hold it not so as to state it, but
   so as to be able to speak about it. And we can and do state what it is
   not, while we are silent as to what it is: we are, in fact, speaking of
   it in the light of its sequels; unable to state it, we may still
   possess it.

   Those divinely possessed and inspired have at least the knowledge that
   they hold some greater thing within them though they cannot tell what
   it is; from the movements that stir them and the utterances that come
   from them they perceive the power, not themselves, that moves them: in
   the same way, it must be, we stand towards the Supreme when we hold the
   Intellectual-Principle pure; we know the divine Mind within, that which
   gives Being and all else of that order: but we know, too, that other,
   know that it is none of these, but a nobler principle than any-thing we
   know as Being; fuller and greater; above reason, mind and feeling;
   conferring these powers, not to be confounded with them.

   15. Conferring -- but how? As itself possessing them or not? How can it
   convey what it does not possess, and yet if it does possess how is it
   simplex? And if, again, it does not, how is it the source of the
   manifold?

   A single, unmanifold emanation we may very well allow -- how even that
   can come from a pure unity may be a problem, but we may always explain
   it on the analogy of the irradiation from a luminary -- but a
   multitudinous production raises question.

   The explanation is that what comes from the Supreme cannot be identical
   with it and assuredly cannot be better than it -- what could be better
   than The One or the utterly transcendent? The emanation, then, must be
   less good, that is to say, less self-sufficing: now what must that be
   which is less self-sufficing than The One? Obviously the Not-One, that
   is to say, multiplicity, but a multiplicity striving towards unity;
   that is to say, a One-that-is-many.

   All that is not One is conserved by virtue of the One, and from the One
   derives its characteristic nature: if it had not attained such unity as
   is consistent with being made up of multiplicity we could not affirm
   its existence: if we are able to affirm the nature of single things,
   this is in virtue of the unity, the identity even, which each of them
   possesses. But the all-transcendent, utterly void of multiplicity, has
   no mere unity of participation but is unity's self, independent of all
   else, as being that from which, by whatever means, all the rest take
   their degree of unity in their standing, near or far, towards it.

   In virtue of the unity manifested in its variety it exhibits, side by
   side, both an all-embracing identity and the existence of the
   secondary: all the variety lies in the midst of a sameness, and
   identity cannot be separated from diversity since all stands as one;
   each item in that content, by the fact of participating in life, is a
   One-many: for the item could not make itself manifest as a One-and-all.

   Only the Transcendent can be that; it is the great beginning, and the
   beginning must be a really existent One, wholly and truly One, while
   its sequent, poured down in some way from the One, is all, a total
   which has participation in unity and whose every member is similarly
   all and one.

   What then is the All?

   The total of which the Transcendent is the Source.

   But in what way is it that source? In the sense, perhaps, of sustaining
   things as bestower of the unity of each single item?

   That too; but also as having established them in being.

   But how? As having, perhaps, contained them previously?

   We have indicated that, thus, the First would be a manifold.

   May we think, perhaps, that the First contained the universe as an
   indistinct total whose items are elaborated to distinct existence
   within the Second by the Reason-Principle there? That Second is
   certainly an Activity; the Transcendent would contain only the
   potentiality of the universe to come.

   But the nature of this contained potentiality would have to be
   explained: it cannot be that of Matter, a receptivity, for thus the
   Source becomes passive -- the very negation of production.

   How then does it produce what it does not contain? Certainly not at
   haphazard and certainly not by selection. How then?

   We have observed that anything that may spring from the One must be
   different from it. Differing, it is not One, since then it would be the
   Source. If unity has given place to duality, from that moment there is
   multiplicity; for here is variety side by side with identity, and this
   imports quality and all the rest.

   We may take it as proved that the emanation of the Transcendent must be
   a Not-One something other than pure unity, but that it is a
   multiplicity, and especially that it is such a multiplicity as is
   exhibited in the sequent universe, this is a statement worthy of
   deliberation: some further enquiry must be made, also, as to the
   necessity of any sequel to the First.

   16. We have, of course, already seen that a secondary must follow upon
   the First, and that this is a power immeasurably fruitful; and we
   indicated that this truth is confirmed by the entire order of things
   since there is nothing, not even in the lowest ranks, void of the power
   of generating. We have now to add that, since things engendered tend
   downwards and not upwards and, especially, move towards multiplicity,
   the first principle of all must be less a manifold than any.

   That which engenders the world of sense cannot itself be a sense-world;
   it must be the Intellect and the Intellectual world; similarly, the
   prior which engenders the Intellectual-Principle and the Intellectual
   world cannot be either, but must be something of less multiplicity. The
   manifold does not rise from the manifold: the intellectual multiplicity
   has its source in what is not manifold; by the mere fact of being
   manifold, the thing is not the first principle: we must look to
   something earlier.

   All must be grouped under a unity which, as standing outside of all
   multiplicity and outside of any ordinary simplicity, is the veritably
   and essentially simplex.

   Still, how can a Reason-Principle [the Intellectual],
   characteristically a manifold, a total, derive from what is obviously
   no Reason-Principle?

   But how, failing such origin in the simplex, could we escape [what
   cannot be accepted] the derivation of a Reason-Principle from a
   Reason-Principle?

   And how does the secondarily good [the imaged Good] derive from The
   Good, the Absolute? What does it hold from the Absolute Good to entitle
   it to the name?

   Similarity to the prior is not enough, it does not help towards
   goodness; we demand similarity only to an actually existent Good: the
   goodness must depend upon derivation from a Prior of such a nature that
   the similarity is desirable because that Prior is good, just as the
   similarity would be undesirable if the Prior were not good.

   Does the similarity with the Prior consist, then, in a voluntary
   resting upon it?

   It is rather that, finding its condition satisfying, it seeks nothing:
   the similarity depends upon the all-sufficiency of what it possesses;
   its existence is agreeable because all is present to it, and present in
   such a way as not to be even different from it [Intellectual-Principle
   is Being].

   All life belongs to it, life brilliant and perfect; thus all in it is
   at once life-principle and Intellectual-Principle, nothing in it aloof
   from either life or intellect: it is therefore self-sufficing and seeks
   nothing: and if it seeks nothing this is because it has in itself what,
   lacking, it must seek. It has, therefore, its Good within itself,
   either by being of that order -- in what we have called its life and
   intellect -- or in some other quality or character going to produce
   these.

   If this [secondary principle] were The Good [The Absolute], nothing
   could transcend these things, life and intellect: but, given the
   existence of something higher, this Intellectual-Principle must possess
   a life directed towards that Transcendent, dependent upon it, deriving
   its being from it, living towards it as towards its source. The First,
   then, must transcend this principle of life and intellect which directs
   thither both the life in itself, a copy of the Reality of the First,
   and the intellect in itself which is again a copy, though of what
   original there we cannot know.

   17. But what can it be which is loftier than that existence -- a life
   compact of wisdom, untouched by struggle and error, or than this
   Intellect which holds the Universe with all there is of life and
   intellect?

   If we answer "The Making Principle," there comes the question, "making
   by what virtue?" and unless we can indicate something higher there than
   in the made, our reasoning has made no advance: we rest where we were.

   We must go higher -- if it were only for the reason that the maker of
   all must have a self-sufficing existence outside of all things -- since
   all the rest is patently indigent -- and that everything has
   participated in The One and, as drawing on unity, is itself not unity.

   What then is this in which each particular entity participates, the
   author of being to the universe and to each item of the total?

   Since it is the author of all that exists, and since the multiplicity
   in each thing is converted into a self-sufficing existence by this
   presence of The One, so that even the particular itself becomes
   self-sufficing, then clearly this principle, author at once of Being
   and of self-sufficingness, is not itself a Being but is above Being and
   above even self-sufficing.

   May we stop, content, with that? No: the Soul is yet, and even more, in
   pain. Is she ripe, perhaps, to bring forth, now that in her pangs she
   has come so close to what she seeks? No: we must call upon yet another
   spell if anywhere the assuagement is to be found. Perhaps in what has
   already been uttered, there lies the charm if only we tell it over
   often? No: we need a new, a further, incantation. All our effort may
   well skim over every truth and through all the verities in which we
   have part, and yet the reality escape us when we hope to affirm, to
   understand: for the understanding, in order to its affirmation must
   possess itself of item after item; only so does it traverse all the
   field: but how can there be any such peregrination of that in which
   there is no variety?

   All the need is met by a contact purely intellective. At the moment of
   touch there is no power whatever to make any affirmation; there is no
   leisure; reasoning upon the vision is for afterwards. We may know we
   have had the vision when the Soul has suddenly taken light. This light
   is from the Supreme and is the Supreme; we may believe in the Presence
   when, like that other God on the call of a certain man, He comes
   bringing light: the light is the proof of the advent. Thus, the Soul
   unlit remains without that vision; lit, it possesses what it sought.
   And this is the true end set before the Soul, to take that light, to
   see the Supreme by the Supreme and not by the light of any other
   principle -- to see the Supreme which is also the means to the vision;
   for that which illumines the Soul is that which it is to see just as it
   is by the sun's own light that we see the sun.

   But how is this to be accomplished?

   Cut away everything.
     __________________________________________________________________

  FOURTH TRACTATE.

  HOW THE SECONDARIES RISE FROM THE FIRST:
  AND ON THE ONE.

   1. Anything existing after The First must necessarily arise from that
   First, whether immediately or as tracing back to it through
   intervenients; there must be an order of secondaries and tertiaries, in
   which any second is to be referred to The First, any third to the
   second.

   Standing before all things, there must exist a Simplex, differing from
   all its sequel, self-gathered not inter-blended with the forms that
   rise from it, and yet able in some mode of its own to be present to
   those others: it must be authentically a unity, not merely something
   elaborated into unity and so in reality no more than unity's
   counterfeit; it will debar all telling and knowing except that it may
   be described as transcending Being -- for if there were nothing outside
   all alliance and compromise, nothing authentically one, there would be
   no Source. Untouched by multiplicity, it will be wholly self-sufficing,
   an absolute First, whereas any not-first demands its earlier, and any
   non-simplex needs the simplicities within itself as the very
   foundations of its composite existence.

   There can be only one such being: if there were another, the two [as
   indiscernible] would resolve into one, for we are not dealing with two
   corporal entities.

   Our One-First is not a body: a body is not simplex and, as a thing of
   process cannot be a First, the Source cannot be a thing of generation:
   only a principle outside of body, and utterly untouched by
   multiplicity, could be The First.

   Any unity, then, later than The First must be no longer simplex; it can
   be no more than a unity in diversity.

   Whence must such a sequent arise?

   It must be an offspring of The First; for suppose it the product of
   chance, that First ceases to be the Principle of All.

   But how does it arise from The First?

   If The First is perfect, utterly perfect above all, and is the
   beginning of all power, it must be the most powerful of all that is,
   and all other powers must act in some partial imitation of it. Now
   other beings, coming to perfection, are observed to generate; they are
   unable to remain self-closed; they produce: and this is true not merely
   of beings endowed with will, but of growing things where there is no
   will; even lifeless objects impart something of themselves, as far as
   they may; fire warms, snow chills, drugs have their own outgoing
   efficacy; all things to the utmost of their power imitate the Source in
   some operation tending to eternity and to service.

   How then could the most perfect remain self-set -- the First Good, the
   Power towards all, how could it grudge or be powerless to give of
   itself, and how at that would it still be the Source?

   If things other than itself are to exist, things dependent upon it for
   their reality, it must produce since there is no other source. And
   further this engendering principle must be the very highest in worth;
   and its immediate offspring, its secondary, must be the best of all
   that follows.

   2. If the Intellectual-Principle were the engendering Source, then the
   engendered secondary, while less perfect than the
   Intellectual-Principle, would be close to it and similar to it: but
   since the engendering Source is above the Intellectual-Principle, the
   secondary can only be that principle.

   But why is the Intellectual-Principle not the generating source?

   Because [it is not a self-sufficing simplex]: the Act of the
   Intellectual-Principle is intellection, which means that, seeing the
   intellectual object towards which it has turned, it is consummated, so
   to speak, by that object, being in itself indeterminate like sight [a
   vague readiness for any and every vision] and determined by the
   intellectual object. This is why it has been said that "out of the
   indeterminate dyad and The One arise the Ideas and the numbers": for
   the dyad is the Intellectual-Principle.

   Thus it is not a simplex; it is manifold; it exhibits a certain
   composite quality -- within the Intellectual or divine order, of course
   -- as the principle that sees the manifold. It is, further, itself
   simultaneously object and agent of intellection and is on that count
   also a duality: and it possesses besides another object of intellection
   in the Order following upon itself.

   But how can the Intellectual-Principle be a product of the Intellectual
   Object?

   In this way: the intellectual object is self-gathered [self-compact]
   and is not deficient as the seeing and knowing principle must be --
   deficient, mean, as needing an object -- it is therefore no unconscious
   thing: all its content and accompaniment are its possession; it is
   self-distinguishing throughout; it is the seat of life as of all
   things; it is, itself, that self-intellection which takes place in
   eternal repose, that is to say, in a mode other than that of the
   Intellectual-Principle.

   But if something comes to being within an entity which in no way looks
   outside itself -- and especially within a being which is the sum of
   being -- that entity must be the source of the new thing: stable in its
   own identity, it produces; but the product is that of an unchanged
   being: the producer is unchangeably the intellectual object, the
   product is produced as the Intellectual Act, an Act taking intellection
   of its source -- the only object that exists for it -- and so becoming
   Intellectual-Principle, that is to say, becoming another intellectual
   being, resembling its source, a reproduction and image of that.

   But how from amid perfect rest can an Act arise?

   There is in everything the Act of the Essence and the Act going out
   from the Essence: the first Act is the thing itself in its realized
   identity, the second Act is an inevitably following outgo from the
   first, an emanation distinct from the thing itself.

   Thus even in fire there is the warmth comported by its essential nature
   and there is the warmth going instantaneously outward from that
   characterizing heat by the fact that the fire, remaining unchangeably
   fire, utters the Act native to its essential reality.

   So it is in the divine also: or rather we have there the earlier form
   of the double act: the divine remains in its own unchanging being, but
   from its perfection and from the Act included in its nature there
   emanates the secondary or issuing Act which -- as the output of a
   mighty power, the mightiest there is -- attains to Real Being as second
   to that which stands above all Being. That transcendent was the
   potentiality of the All; this secondary is the All made actual.

   And if this is all things, that must be above and outside of all, so,
   must transcend real being. And again, if that secondary is all things,
   and if above its multiplicity there is a unity not ranking among those
   things, once more this unity transcends Real Being and therefore
   transcends the Intellectual-Principle as well. There is thus something
   transcending Intellectual-Principle, for we must remember that real
   being is no corpse, the negation of life and of intellection, but is in
   fact identical with the Intellectual-Principle. The
   Intellectual-Principle is not something taking cognisance of things as
   sensation deals with sense objects existing independently of sense: on
   the contrary, it actually is the things it knows: the ideas
   constituting them it has not borrowed: whence could it have taken them?
   No: it exists here together with the things of the universe, identical
   with them, making a unity with them; and the collective knowledge [in
   the divine mind] of the immaterial is the universe of things.
     __________________________________________________________________

  FIFTH TRACTATE.

  THAT THE INTELLECTUAL BEINGS ARE NOT OUTSIDE
  THE INTELLECTUAL-PRINCIPLE: AND ON
  THE NATURE OF THE GOOD.

   1. The Intellectual-Principle, the veritably and essentially
   intellective, can this be conceived as ever falling into error, ever
   failing to think reality?

   Assuredly no: it would no longer be intelligent and therefore no longer
   Intellectual-Principle: it must know unceasingly -- and never forget;
   and its knowledge can be no guesswork, no hesitating assent, no
   acceptance of an alien report. Nor can it call on demonstration or, we
   are told it may at times act by this or, I method, at least there must
   be something patent to it in virtue of its own nature. In actual fact
   reason tells us that all its knowledge is thus inherent to it, for
   there is no means by which to distinguish between the spontaneous
   knowledge and the other. But, in any case, some knowledge, it is
   conceded, is inherent to it. Whence are we to understand the certainty
   of this knowledge to come to it or how do its objects carry the
   conviction of their reality?

   Consider sense-knowledge: its objects seem most patently certified, yet
   the doubt returns whether the apparent reality may not lie in the
   states of the percipient rather than in the material before him; the
   decision demands intelligence or reasoning. Besides, even granting that
   what the senses grasp is really contained in the objects, none the less
   what is thus known by the senses is an image: sense can never grasp the
   thing itself; this remains for ever outside.

   Now, if the Intellectual-Principle in its act -- that is in knowing the
   intellectual -- is to know these its objects as alien, we have to
   explain how it makes contact with them: obviously it might never come
   upon them, and so might never know them; or it might know them only
   upon the meeting: its knowing, at that, would not be an enduring
   condition. If we are told that the Intellectual-Principle and the
   Intellectual Objects are linked in a standing unity, we demand the
   description of this unity.

   Next, the intellections would be impressions, that is to say not native
   act but violence from without: now how is such impressing possible and
   what shape could the impressions bear?

   Intellection, again, becomes at this a mere handling of the external,
   exactly like sense-perception. What then distinguishes it unless that
   it deals with objects of less extension? And what certitude can it have
   that its knowledge is true? Or what enables it to pronounce that the
   object is good, beautiful, or just, when each of these ideas is to
   stand apart from itself? The very principles of judgement, by which it
   must be guided, would be [as Ideas] excluded: with objects and canons
   alike outside it, so is truth.

   Again; either the objects of the Intellectual-Principle are senseless
   and devoid of life and intellect or they are in possession of
   Intellect.

   Now, if they are in possession of Intellect, that realm is a union of
   both and is Truth. This combined Intellectual realm will be the Primal
   Intellect: we have only then to examine how this reality, conjoint of
   Intellectual-Principle and its object, is to be understood, whether as
   combining self-united identity with yet duality and difference, or what
   other relation holds between them.

   If on the contrary the objects of Intellectual-Principle are without
   intelligence and life, what are they? They cannot be premises, axioms
   or predicates: as predicates they would not have real existence; they
   would be affirmations linking separate entities, as when we affirm that
   justice is good though justice and good are distinct realities.

   If we are told that they are self-standing entities -- the distinct
   beings Justice and Good -- then [supposing them to be outside] the
   Intellectual Realm will not be a unity nor be included in any unity:
   all is sundered individuality. Where, then, are they and what spatial
   distinction keeps them apart? How does the Intellectual-Principle come
   to meet with them as it travels round; what keeps each true to its
   character; what gives them enduring identity; what conceivable shape or
   character can they have? They are being presented to us as some
   collection of figures, in gold or some other material substance, the
   work of some unknown sculptor or graver: but at once the
   Intellectual-Principle which contemplates them becomes
   sense-perception; and there still remains the question how one of them
   comes to be Justice and another something else.

   But the great argument is that if we are to allow that these objects of
   Intellection are in the strict sense outside the
   Intellectual-Principle, which, therefore, must see them as external,
   then inevitably it cannot possess the truth of them.

   In all it looks upon, it sees falsely; for those objects must be the
   authentic things; yet it looks upon them without containing them and in
   such knowledge holds only their images; that is to say, not containing
   the authentic, adopting phantasms of the true, it holds the false; it
   never possesses reality. If it knows that it possesses the false, it
   must confess itself excluded from the truth; if it fails of this
   knowledge also, imagining itself to possess the truth which has eluded
   it, then the doubled falsity puts it the deeper into error.

   It is thus, I suppose, that in sense-perception we have belief instead
   of truth; belief is our lief; we satisfy ourselves with something very
   different from the original which is the occasion of perception.

   In fine, there would be on the hypothesis no truth in the
   Intellectual-Principle. But such an Intellectual-Principle would not be
   truth, nor truly an Intellectual-Principle. There would be no
   Intellectual-Principle at all [no Divine Mind]: yet elsewhere truth
   cannot be.

   2. Thus we may not look for the Intellectual objects [the Ideas]
   outside of the Intellectual-Principle, treating them as impressions of
   reality upon it: we cannot strip it of truth and so make its objects
   unknowable and non-existent and in the end annul the
   Intellectual-Principle itself. We must provide for knowledge and for
   truth; we must secure reality; being must become knowable essentially
   and not merely in that knowledge of quality which could give us a mere
   image or vestige of the reality in lieu of possession, intimate
   association, absorption.

   The only way to this is to leave nothing out side of the veritable
   Intellectual-Principle which thus has knowledge in the true knowing
   [that of identification with the object], cannot forget, need not go
   wandering in search. At once truth is there, this is the seat of the
   authentic Existents, it becomes living and intellective: these are the
   essentials of that most lofty Principle; and, failing them, where is
   its worth, its grandeur?

   Only thus [by this inherence of the Ideas] is it dispensed from
   demonstration and from acts of faith in the truth of its knowledge: it
   is its entire self, self-perspicuous: it knows a prior by recognising
   its own source; it knows a sequent to that prior by its self-identity;
   of the reality of this sequent, of the fact that it is present and has
   authentic existence, no outer entity can bring it surer conviction.

   Thus veritable truth is not accordance with an external; it is
   self-accordance; it affirms and is nothing other than itself and is
   nothing other; it is at once existence and self-affirmation. What
   external, then, can call it to the question, and from what source of
   truth could the refutation be brought? Any counter affirmation [of
   truth] must fall into identity with the truth which first uttered
   itself; brought forward as new, it has to appear before the Principle
   which made the earlier statement and to show itself identical with
   that: for there is no finding anything truer than the true.

   3. Thus we have here one identical Principle, the Intellect, which is
   the universe of authentic beings, the Truth: as such it is a great god
   or, better, not a god among gods but the Godhead entire. It is a god, a
   secondary god manifesting before there is any vision of that other, the
   Supreme which rests over all, enthroned in transcendence upon that
   splendid pediment, the Nature following close upon it.

   The Supreme in its progress could never be borne forward upon some
   soulless vehicle nor even directly upon the soul: it will be heralded
   by some ineffable beauty: before the great King in his progress there
   comes first the minor train, then rank by rank the greater and more
   exalted, closer to the King the kinglier; next his own honoured company
   until, last among all these grandeurs, suddenly appears the Supreme
   Monarch himself, and all -- unless indeed for those who have contented
   themselves with the spectacle before his coming and gone away --
   prostrate themselves and hail him.

   In that royal progress the King is of another order from those that go
   before him, but the King in the Supreme is no ruler over externs; he
   holds that most just of governances, rooted in nature, the veritable
   kingship, for he is King of Truth, holding sway by all reason over a
   dense offspring his own, a host that shares his divinity, King over a
   king and over kings and even more justly called father of Gods.

   [Interpolation: Zeus (Universal Soul) is in this a symbol of him, Zeus
   who is not content with the contemplation of his father (Kronos, divine
   Intellect) but looks to that father's father (to Ouranos, the
   Transcendent) as what may be called the divine energy working to the
   establishment of a real being.]

   4. We have said that all must be brought back to a unity: this must be
   an authentic unity, not belonging to the order in which multiplicity is
   unified by participation in what is truly a One; we need a unity
   independent of participation, not a combination in which multiplicity
   holds an equal place: we have exhibited, also, the Intellectual Realm
   and the Intellectual-Principle as more closely a unity than the rest of
   things, so that there is nothing closer to The One. Yet even this is
   not The purely One.

   This purely One, essentially a unity untouched by the multiple, this we
   now desire to penetrate if in any way we may.

   Only by a leap can we reach to this One which is to be pure of all
   else, halting sharp in fear of slipping ever so little aside and
   impinging on the dual: for if we fail of the centre, we are in a
   duality which does not even include The authentic One but belongs on
   both sides, to the later order. The One does not bear to be numbered in
   with anything else, with a one or a two or any such quantity; it
   refuses to take number because it is measure and not the measured; it
   is no peer of other entities to be found among them; for thus, it and
   they alike would be included in some container and this would be its
   prior, the prior it cannot have. Not even essential [ideal or abstract]
   number can belong to The One and certainly not the still later number
   applying to quantities; for essential number first appears as providing
   duration to the divine Intellection, while quantitative number is that
   [still later and lower] which furnishes the Quantity found in
   conjunction with other things or which provides for Quantity
   independent of things, if this is to be thought of as number at all.
   The Principle which in objects having quantitative number looks to the
   unity from which they spring is a copy [or lower phase] of the
   Principle which in the earlier order of number [in essential or ideal
   number] looks to the veritable One; and it attains its existence
   without in the least degree dissipating or shattering that prior unity:
   the dyad has come into being, but the precedent monad still stands; and
   this monad is quite distinct within the dyad from either of the two
   constituent unities, since there is nothing to make it one rather than
   the other: being neither, but simply that thing apart, it is present
   without being inherent.

   But how are the two unities distinct and how is the dyad a unity, and
   is this unity the same as the unity by which each of the constituents
   is one thing?

   Our answer must be that the unity is that of a participation in the
   primal unity with the participants remaining distinct from that in
   which they partake; the dyad, in so far as it is one thing, has this
   participation, but in a certain degree only; the unity of an army is
   not that of a single building; the dyad, as a thing of extension, is
   not strictly a unit either quantitatively or in manner of being.

   Are we then to take it that the monads in the pentad and decad differ
   while the unity in the pentad is the same as that in the decad?

   Yes, in the sense in which, big and little, ship is one with ship, army
   with army, city with city; otherwise, no. But certain difficulties in
   this matter will be dealt with later.

   5. We return to our statement that The First remains intact even when
   other entities spring from it.

   In the case of numbers, the unit remains intact while something else
   produces, and thus number arises in dependence on the unit: much more
   then does the unit, The One, remain intact in the principle which is
   before all beings; especially since the entities produced in its
   likeness, while it thus remains intact, owe their existence to no
   other, but to its own all-sufficient power.

   And just as there is, primarily or secondarily, some form or idea from
   the monad in each of the successive numbers -- the later still
   participating, though unequally, in the unit -- so the series of Beings
   following upon The First bear, each, some form or idea derived from
   that source. In Number the participation establishes Quantity; in the
   realm of Being, the trace of The One establishes reality: existence is
   a trace of The One -- our word for entity may probably be connected
   with that for unity.

   What we know as Being, the first sequent upon The One, advanced a
   little outward, so to speak, then chose to go no further, turned inward
   again and comes to rest and is now the reality and hearth [ousia and
   hestia] of the universe. Pressing [with the rough breathing] on the
   word for Being [on] we have the word "hen" [one], an indication that in
   our very form of speech we tell, as far as may be, that Being [the
   weaker] is that which proceeds from [the stronger] The One. Thus both
   the thing that comes to be and Being itself are carriers of a copy,
   since they are outflows from the power of The primal One: this power
   sees and in its emotion tries to represent what it sees and breaks into
   speech "On"; "einai"; "ousia," "hestia" [Existent: Existence: Essence:
   Hestia or Hearth], sounds which labour to express the essential nature
   of the universe produced by the travail of the utterer and so to
   represent, as far as sounds may, the origin of reality.

   6. All this, however, we may leave to individual judgement: to proceed:

   This produced reality is an Ideal form -- for certainly nothing
   springing from the Supreme can be less -- and it is not a particular
   form but the form of all, beside which there is no other; it follows
   that The First must be without form, and, if without form, then it is
   no Being; Being must have some definition and therefore be limited; but
   the First cannot be thought of as having definition and limit, for thus
   it would be not the Source but the particular item indicated by the
   definition assigned to it. If all things belong to the produced, which
   of them can be thought of as the Supreme? Not included among them, this
   can be described only as transcending them: but they are Being and the
   Beings; it therefore transcends Being.

   Note that the phrase transcending Being assigns no character, makes no
   assertion, allots no name, carries only the denial of particular being;
   and in this there is no attempt to circumscribe it: to seek to throw a
   line about that illimitable Nature would be folly, and anyone thinking
   to do so cuts himself off from any slightest and most momentary
   approach to its least vestige.

   As one wishing to contemplate the Intellectual Nature will lay aside
   all the representations of sense and so may see what transcends the
   sense-realm, in the same way one wishing to contemplate what transcends
   the Intellectual attains by putting away all that is of the intellect,
   taught by the intellect, no doubt, that the Transcendent exists but
   never seeking to define it.

   Its definition, in fact, could be only "the indefinable": what is not a
   thing is not some definite thing. We are in agony for a true
   expression; we are talking of the untellable; we name, only to indicate
   for our own use as best we may. And this name, The One, contains really
   no more than the negation of plurality: under the same pressure the
   Pythagoreans found their indication in the symbol "Apollo" [a= not;
   pollon= of many] with its repudiation of the multiple. If we are led to
   think positively of The One, name and thing, there would be more truth
   in silence: the designation, a mere aid to enquiry, was never intended
   for more than a preliminary affirmation of absolute simplicity to be
   followed by the rejection of even that statement: it was the best that
   offered, but remains inadequate to express the Nature indicated. For
   this is a principle not to be conveyed by any sound; it cannot be known
   on any hearing but, if at all, by vision; and to hope in that vision to
   see a form is to fail of even that.

   7. Consider the act of ocular vision:

   There are two elements here; there is the form perceptible to the sense
   and there is the medium by which the eye sees that form. This medium is
   itself perceptible to the eye, distinct from the form to be seen, but
   the cause of the seeing; it is perceived at the one stroke in that form
   and on it and, hence, is not distinguished from it, the eye being held
   entirely by the illuminated object. When on the contrary this medium
   presents itself alone it is seen directly -- though even then actual
   sight demands some solid base; there must be something besides the
   medium which, unless embracing some object, eludes perception; thus the
   light inherent to the sun would not be perceived but for the solidity
   of the mass. If it is objected that the sun is light entire, this would
   only be a proof of our assertion: no other visible form will contain
   light which must, then, have no other property than that of visibility,
   and in fact all other visible objects are something more than light
   alone.

   So it is with the act of vision in the Intellectual Principle.

   This vision sees, by another light, the objects illuminated by the
   First Principle: setting itself among them, it sees veritably;
   declining towards the lower Nature, that upon which the light from
   above rests, it has less of that vision. Passing over the visible and
   looking to the medium by which it sees, then it holds the Light and the
   source of Light.

   But since the Intellectual-Principle is not to see this light as
   something external we return to our analogy; the eye is not wholly
   dependent upon an outside and alien light; there is an earlier light
   within itself, a more brilliant, which it sees sometimes in a momentary
   flash. At night in the darkness a gleam leaps from within the eye: or
   again we make no effort to see anything; the eyelids close; yet a light
   flashes before us; or we rub the eye and it sees the light it contains.
   This is sight without the act, but it is the truest seeing, for it sees
   light whereas its other objects were the lit not the light.

   It is certainly thus that the Intellectual-Principle, hiding itself
   from all the outer, withdrawing to the inmost, seeing nothing, must
   have its vision -- not of some other light in some other thing but of
   the light within itself, unmingled, pure, suddenly gleaming before it;

   8. So that we are left wondering whence it came, from within or
   without; and when it has gone, we say, "It was here. Yet no; it was
   beyond!" But we ought not to question whence; there is no whence, no
   coming or going in place; now it is seen and now not seen. We must not
   run after it, but fit ourselves for the vision and then wait tranquilly
   for its appearance, as the eye waits on the rising of the sun, which in
   its own time appears above the horizon -- out of the ocean, as the
   poets say -- and gives itself to our sight.

   This Principle, of which the sun is an image, where has it its dawning,
   what horizon does it surmount to appear?

   It stands immediately above the contemplating Intellect which has held
   itself at rest towards the vision, looking to nothing else than the
   good and beautiful, setting its entire being to that in a perfect
   surrender, and now tranquilly filled with power and taking a new beauty
   to itself, gleaming in the light of that presence.

   This advent, still, is not by expectation: it is a coming without
   approach; the vision is not of something that must enter but of
   something present before all else, before the Intellect itself made any
   movement. Yet it is the Intellect that must move, to come and to go --
   going because it has not known where it should stay and where that
   presence stays, the nowhere contained.

   And if the Intellect, too, could hold itself in that nowhere -- not
   that it is ever in place; it too is uncontained, utterly unplaced -- it
   would remain for ever in the vision of its prior, or, indeed, not in
   vision but in identity, all duality annulled. But it is Intellect
   [having a sphere of its own] and, when it is to see, it must see by
   that in it which is not Intellect [by its divinest power].

   No doubt it is wonderful that The First should thus be present without
   any coming, and that, while it is nowhere, nowhere is it not; but
   wonderful though this be in itself, the contrary would be more
   wonderful to those who know. Of course neither this contrary nor the
   wonder at it can be entertained. But we must explain:

   9. Everything brought into being under some principle not itself is
   contained either within its maker or, if there is any intermediate,
   within that: having a prior essential to its being, it needs that prior
   always, otherwise it would not be contained at all. It is the order of
   nature: The last in the immediately preceding lasts, things of the
   order of the Firsts within their prior-firsts, and so thing within
   thing up to the very pinnacle of source.

   That Source, having no prior, cannot be contained: uncontained by any
   of those other forms of being, each held within the series of priors,
   it is orbed round all, but so as not to be pointed off to hold them
   part for part; it possesses but is not possessed. Holding all -- though
   itself nowhere held -- it is omnipresent, for where its presence failed
   something would elude its hold. At the same time, in the sense that it
   is nowhere held, it is not present: thus it is both present and not
   present; not present as not being circumscribed by anything; yet, as
   being utterly unattached, not inhibited from presence at any point.
   That inhibition would mean that the First was determined by some other
   being; the later series, then, would be without part in the Supreme;
   God has His limit and is no longer self-governed but mastered by
   inferiors.

   While the contained must be where its container is, what is uncontained
   by place is not debarred from any: for, imagine a place where it is not
   and evidently some other place retains it; at once it is contained and
   there is an end of its placelessness.

   But if the "nowhere" is to stand and the ascription of a "where,"
   implying station in the extern, is to fall, then nothing can be left
   void; and at once -- nothing void, yet no point containing -- God is
   sovereignly present through all. We cannot think of something of God
   here and something else there, nor of all God gathered at some one
   spot: there is an instantaneous presence everywhere, nothing containing
   and nothing left void, everything therefore fully held by the divine.

   Consider our universe. There is none before it and therefore it is not,
   itself, in a universe or in any place -- what place was there before
   the universe came to be? -- its linked members form and occupy the
   whole. But Soul is not in the universe, on the contrary the universe is
   in the Soul; bodily substance is not a place to the Soul; Soul is
   contained in Intellectual-Principle and is the container of body. The
   Intellectual-Principle in turn is contained in something else; but that
   prior principle has nothing in which to be: the First is therefore in
   nothing, and, therefore, nowhere. But all the rest must be somewhere;
   and where but in the First?

   This can mean only that the First is neither remote from things nor
   directly within them; there is nothing containing it; it contains all.
   It is The Good to the universe if only in this way, that towards it all
   things have their being, all dependent upon it, each in its mode, so
   that thing rises above thing in goodness according to its fuller
   possession of authentic being.

   10. Still, do not, I urge you, look for The Good through any of these
   other things; if you do, you will see not itself but its trace: you
   must form the idea of that which is to be grasped cleanly standing to
   itself not in any combination, the unheld in which all have hold: for
   no other is such, yet one such there must be.

   Now it is clear that we cannot possess ourselves of the power of this
   principle in its concentrated fulness: so to do one must be identical
   with it: but some partial attainment is within our reach.

   You who make the venture will throw forward all your being but you will
   never tell it entire -- for that, you must yourself be the divine
   Intellect in Act -- and at your utmost success it will still pass from
   you or, rather, you from it. In ordinary vision you may think to see
   the object entire: in this intellective act, all, less or more, that
   you can take to mind you may set down as The Good.

   It is The Good since, being a power [being effective outwardly], it is
   the cause of the intelligent and intellective life as of life and
   intellect: for these grow from it as from the source of essence and of
   existence, the Source as being One, simplex and first because before it
   was nothing. All derives from this: it is the origin of the primal
   movement which it does not possess and of the repose which is but its
   absence of need; for neither rest nor movement can belong to that which
   has no place in which either could occur; centre, object, ground, all
   are alike unknown to it, for it is before all. Yet its Being is not
   limited; what is there to set bounds to it? Nor, on the other hand, is
   it infinite in the sense of magnitude; what place can there be to which
   it must extend, or why should there be movement where there is no
   lacking? All its infinitude resides in its power: it does not change
   and will not fail; and in it all that is unfailing finds duration.

   11. It is infinite also by right of being a pure unity with nothing
   towards which to direct any partial content. Absolutely One, it has
   never known measure and stands outside of number, and so is under no
   limit either in regard to any extern or within itself; for any such
   determination would bring something of the dual into it. And having no
   constituent parts it accepts no pattern, forms no shape.

   Reason recognising it as such a nature, you may not hope to see it with
   mortal eyes, nor in any way that would be imagined by those who make
   sense the test of reality and so annul the supremely real. For what
   passes for the most truly existent is most truly non-existent -- the
   thing of extension least real of all -- while this unseen First is the
   source and principle of Being and sovereign over Reality.

   You must turn appearances about or you will be left void of God. You
   will be like those at the festivals who in their gluttony cram
   themselves with things which none going to the gods may touch; they
   hold these goods to be more real than the vision of the God who is to
   be honoured and they go away having had no share in the sanctities of
   the shrine.

   In these celebrations of which we speak, the unseen god leaves those in
   doubt of his existence who think nothing patent but what may be known
   to the flesh: it happens as if a man slept a life through and took the
   dream world in perfect trust; wake him, and he would refuse belief to
   the report of his open eyes and settle down to sleep again.

   12. Knowing demands the organ fitted to the object; eyes for one kind,
   ears for another: similarly some things, we must believe, are to be
   known by the Intellectual-Principle in us. We must not confuse
   intellection with hearing or seeing; this would be trying to look with
   the ears or denying sound because it is not seen. Certain people, we
   must keep in mind, have forgotten that to which, from the beginning
   onwards, their longing and effort are pointed: for all that exists
   desires and aspires towards the Supreme by a compulsion of nature, as
   if all had received the oracle that without it they cannot be.

   The perception of Beauty and the awe and the stirring of passion
   towards it are for those already in some degree knowing and awakened:
   but the Good, as possessed long since and setting up a natural
   tendency, is inherently present to even those asleep and brings them no
   wonder when some day they see it, since it is no occasional
   reminiscence but is always with them though in their drowse they are
   not aware of it: the love of Beauty on the contrary sets up pain when
   it appears, for those that have seen it must pursue. This love of
   Beauty then is later than the love of Good and comes with a more
   sophisticated understanding; hence we know that Beauty is a secondary:
   the more primal appetition, not patent to sense, our movement towards
   our good, gives witness that The Good is the earlier, the prior.

   Again; all that have possessed themselves of The Good feel it
   sufficient: they have attained the end: but Beauty not all have known
   and those that have judge it to exist for itself and not for them, as
   in the charm of this world the beauty belongs only to its possessor.

   Then, too, it is thought enough to appear loveable whether one is so or
   not: but no one wants his Good in semblance only. All are seeking The
   First as something ranking before aught else, but they struggle
   venomously for beauty as something secondary like themselves: thus some
   minor personage may perhaps challenge equal honour with the King's
   right-hand man on pretext of similar dependence, forgetting that, while
   both owe their standing to the monarch, the other holds the higher
   rank.

   The source of the error is that while both The Good and The Beautiful
   participate in the common source, The One precedes both; and that, in
   the Supreme also, The Good has no need of The Beautiful, while the
   Beautiful does need The Good.

   The Good is gentle and friendly and tender, and we have it present when
   we but will. Beauty is all violence and stupefaction; its pleasure is
   spoiled with pain, and it even draws the thoughtless away from The Good
   as some attraction will lure the child from the father's side: these
   things tell of youth. The Good is the older -- not in time but by
   degree of reality -- and it has the higher and earlier power, all power
   in fact, for the sequent holds only a power subordinate and delegated
   of which the prior remains sovereign.

   Not that God has any need of His derivatives: He ignores all that
   produced realm, never necessary to Him, and remains identically what He
   was before He brought it into being. So too, had the secondary never
   existed, He would have been unconcerned, exactly as He would not have
   grudged existence to any other universe that might spring into being
   from Him, were any such possible; of course no other such could be
   since there is nothing that has not existence once the All exists.

   But God never was the All; that would make Him dependent upon the
   universe: transcending all, He was able at once to make all things and
   to leave them to their own being, He above.

   13. The Supreme, as the Absolute Good and not merely a good being or
   thing, can contain nothing, since there is nothing that could be its
   good.

   Anything it could contain must be either good to it or not good; but in
   the supremely and primally Good there can be nothing not good; nor can
   the Absolute Good be a container to the Good: containing, then, neither
   the good nor the not good it contains nothing and, containing nothing,
   it is alone: it is void of all but itself.

   If the rest of being either is good -- without being the absolute good
   -- or is not good, while on the other hand the Supreme contains neither
   what is good nor what is not good, then, containing nothing, it is The
   Good by that very absence of content.

   Thus we rob it of its very being as The Absolute Good if we ascribe
   anything to it, existence or intellect or goodness. The only way is to
   make every denial and no assertion, to feign no quality or content
   there but to permit only the "It is" in which we pretend to no
   affirmation of non-existent attribute: there is an ignorant praise
   which, missing the true description, drags in qualities beneath the
   real worth and so abases; philosophy must guard against attaching to
   the Supreme what is later and lower: moving above all that order, it is
   the cause and source of all these, and is none of them.

   For, once more, the nature of the Good is not such as to make it all
   things or a thing among all: that would range it under the same
   classification with them all and it would differ, thus, only by its
   individual quality, some specialty, some addition. At once it becomes
   not a unity but a duality; there is one common element not good and
   another element that is good; but a combination so made up of good and
   not good cannot be the purely good, the primarily good; the primarily
   good must be that principle in which the better element has more
   effectively participated and so attained its goodness. Any good thing
   has become so by communion; but that in which it has communion is not a
   thing among the things of the all; therefore the Good is not a thing of
   the All.

   Since there is this Good in any good thing -- the specific difference
   by which the combination becomes good -- it must enter from elsewhere
   than the world of things: that source must be a Good absolute and
   isolated. Thus is revealed to us the Primarily existent, the Good,
   above all that has being, good unalloyed, containing nothing in itself,
   utterly unmingling, all-transcending, cause of all.

   Certainly neither Being nor Beauty springs from evil or from the
   neutral; the maker, as the more consummate, must surpass the made.
     __________________________________________________________________

  SIXTH TRACTATE.

  THAT THE PRINCIPLE TRANSCENDING BEING HAS
  NO INTELLECTUAL ACT. WHAT BEING HAS
  INTELLECTION PRIMALLY AND WHAT
  BEING HAS IT SECONDARILY.

   1. There is a principle having intellection of the external and another
   having self-intellection and thus further removed from duality.

   Even the first mentioned is not without an effort towards the pure
   unity of which it is not so capable: it does actually contain its
   object, though as something other than itself.

   In the self-intellective, there is not even this distinction of being:
   self-conversing, the subject is its own object, and thus takes the
   double form while remaining essentially a unity. The intellection is
   the more profound for this internal possession of the object.

   This principle is the primally intellective since there can be no
   intellection without duality in unity. If there is no unity, perceiving
   principle and perceived object will be different, and the intellection,
   therefore, not primal: a principle concerned with something external
   cannot be the primally intellective since it does not possess the
   object as integrally its own or as itself; if it does possess the
   object as itself -- the condition of true intellection -- the two are
   one. Thus [in order to primal intellection] there must be a unity in
   duality, while a pure unity with no counterbalancing duality can have
   no object for its intellection and ceases to be intellective: in other
   words the primally intellective must be at once simplex and something
   else.

   But the surest way of realizing that its nature demands this
   combination of unity and duality is to proceed upwards from the Soul,
   where the distinction can be made more dearly since the duality is
   exhibited more obviously.

   We can imagine the Soul as a double light, a lesser corresponding to
   the soul proper, a purer representing its intellective phase; if now we
   suppose this intellective light equal to the light which is to be its
   object, we no longer distinguish between them; the two are recognised
   as one: we know, indeed, that there are two, but as we see them they
   have become one: this gives us the relation between the intellective
   subject and the object of intellection [in the duality and unity
   required by that primal intellection]: in our thought we have made the
   two into one; but on the other hand the one thing has become two,
   making itself into a duality at the moment of intellection, or, to be
   more exact, being dual by the fact of intellection and single by the
   fact that its intellectual object is itself.

   2. Thus there is the primally intellective and there is that in which
   intellection has taken another mode; but this indicates that what
   transcends the primarily intellective has no intellection; for, to have
   intellection, it must become an Intellectual-Principle, and, if it is
   to become that, it must possess an intellectual object and, as
   primarily intellective, it must possess that intellectual object as
   something within itself.

   But it is not inevitable that every intellectual object should both
   possess the intellective principle in itself and exercise intellection:
   at that, it would be not merely object but subject as well and,
   besides, being thus dual, could not be primal: further, the
   intellectual principle that is to possess the intellectual object could
   not cohere unless there existed an essence purely intellectual,
   something which, while standing as intellectual object to the
   intellectual principle, is in its own essence neither an agent nor an
   object of intellection. The intellectual object points to something
   beyond itself [to a percipient]; and the intellectual agent has its
   intellection in vain unless by seizing and holding an object -- since,
   failing that, it can have no intellection but is consummated only when
   it possesses itself of its natural term.

   There must have been something standing consummate independently of any
   intellectual act, something perfect in its own essence: thus that in
   which this completion is inherent must exist before intellection; in
   other words it has no need of intellection, having been always
   self-sufficing: this, then, will have no intellectual act.

   Thus we arrive at: a principle having no intellection, a principle
   having intellection primarily, a principle having it secondarily.

   It may be added that, supposing The First to be intellective, it
   thereby possesses something [some object, some attribute]: at once it
   ceases to be a first; it is a secondary, and not even a unity; it is a
   many; it is all of which it takes intellectual possession; even though
   its intellection fell solely upon its own content, it must still be a
   manifold.

   3. We may be told that nothing prevents an identity being thus
   multiple. But there must be a unity underlying the aggregate: a
   manifold is impossible without a unity for its source or ground, or at
   least, failing some unity, related or unrelated. This unity must be
   numbered as first before all and can be apprehended only as solitary
   and self-existent.

   When we recognize it, resident among the mass of things, our business
   is to see it for what it is -- present to the items but essentially
   distinguished from them -- and, while not denying it there, to seek
   this underly of all no longer as it appears in those other things but
   as it stands in its pure identity by itself. The identity resident in
   the rest of things is no doubt close to authentic identity but cannot
   be it; and, if the identity of unity is to be displayed beyond itself,
   it must also exist within itself alone.

   It may be suggested that its existence takes substantial form only by
   its being resident among outside things: but, at this, it is itself no
   longer simplex nor could any coherence of manifolds occur. On the one
   hand things could take substantial existence only if they were in their
   own virtue simplex. On the other hand, failing a simplex, the aggregate
   of multiples is itself impossible: for the simplex individual thing
   could not exist if there were no simplex unity independent of the
   individual, [a principle of identity] and, not existing, much less
   could it enter into composition with any other such: it becomes
   impossible then for the compound universe, the aggregate of all, to
   exist; it would be the coming together of things that are not, things
   not merely lacking an identity of their own but utterly non-existent.

   Once there is any manifold, there must be a precedent unity: since any
   intellection implies multiplicity in the intellective subject, the
   non-multiple must be without intellection; that non-multiple will be
   the First: intellection and the Intellectual-Principle must be
   characteristic of beings coming later.

   4. Another consideration is that if The Good [and First] is simplex and
   without need, it can neither need the intellective act nor possess what
   it does not need: it will therefore not have intellection.
   (Interpolation or corruption: It is without intellection because, also,
   it contains no duality.)

   Again; an Intellectual-Principle is distinct from The Good and takes a
   certain goodness only by its intellection of The Good.

   Yet again: In any dual object there is the unity [the principle of
   identity] side by side with the rest of the thing; an associated member
   cannot be the unity of the two and there must be a self-standing unity
   [within the duality] before this unity of members can exist: by the
   same reasoning there must be also the supreme unity entering into no
   association whatever, something which is unity-simplex by its very
   being, utterly devoid of all that belongs to the thing capable of
   association.

   How could anything be present in anything else unless in virtue of a
   source existing independently of association? The simplex [or absolute]
   requires no derivation; but any manifold, or any dual, must be
   dependent.

   We may use the figure of, first, light; then, following it, the sun; as
   a third, the orb of the moon taking its light from the sun: Soul
   carries the Intellectual-Principle as something imparted and lending
   the light which makes it essentially intellective;
   Intellectual-Principle carries the light as its own though it is not
   purely the light but is the being into whose very essence the light has
   been received; highest is That which, giving forth the light to its
   sequent, is no other than the pure light itself by whose power the
   Intellectual-Principle takes character.

   How can this highest have need of any other? It is not to be identified
   with any of the things that enter into association; the self-standing
   is of a very different order.

   5. And again: the multiple must be always seeking its identity,
   desiring self-accord and self-awareness: but what scope is there within
   what is an absolute unity in which to move towards its identity or at
   what term may it hope for self-knowing? It holds its identity in its
   very essence and is above consciousness and all intellective act.
   Intellection is not a primal either in the fact of being or in the
   value of being; it is secondary and derived: for there exists The Good;
   and this moves towards itself while its sequent is moved and by that
   movement has its characteristic vision.

   The intellective act may be defined as a movement towards The Good in
   some being that aspires towards it; the effort produces the fact; the
   two are coincident; to see is to have desired to see: hence again the
   Authentic Good has no need of intellection since itself and nothing
   else is its good. The intellective act is a movement towards the
   unmoved Good: thus the self-intellection in all save the Absolute Good
   is the working of the imaged Good within them: the intellectual
   principle recognises the likeness, sees itself as a good to itself, an
   object of attraction: it grasps at that manifestation of The Good and,
   in holding that, holds self-vision: if the state of goodness is
   constant, it remains constantly self-attractive and self-intellective.
   The self-intellection is not deliberate: it sees itself as an incident
   in its contemplation of The Good; for it sees itself in virtue of its
   Act; and, in all that exists, the Act is towards The Good.

   6. If this reasoning is valid, The Good has no scope whatever for
   intellection which demands something attractive from outside. The Good,
   then, is without Act. What Act indeed, could be vested in Activity's
   self? No activity has yet again an activity; and whatever we may add to
   such Activities as depend from something else, at least we must leave
   the first Activity of them all, that from which all depend, as an
   uncontaminated identity, one to which no such addition can be made.

   That primal Activity, then, is not an intellection, for there is
   nothing upon which it could Exercise intellection since it is The
   First; besides, intellection itself does not exercise the intellective
   act; this belongs to some principle in which intellection is vested.
   There is, we repeat, duality in any thinking being; and the First is
   wholly above the dual.

   But all this may be made more evident by a clearer recognition of the
   twofold principle at work wherever there is intellection:

   When we affirm the reality of the Real Beings and their individual
   identity of being and declare that these Real Beings exist in the
   Intellectual Realm, we do not mean merely that they remain unchangeably
   self-identical by their very essence, as contrasted with the fluidity
   and instability of the sense-realm; the sense-realm itself may contain
   the enduring. No; we mean rather that these principles possess, as by
   their own virtue, the consummate fulness of being. The Essence
   described as the primally existent cannot be a shadow cast by Being,
   but must possess Being entire; and Being is entire when it holds the
   form and idea of intellection and of life. In a Being, then, the
   existence, the intellection, the life are present as an aggregate. When
   a thing is a Being, it is also an Intellectual-Principle, when it is an
   Intellectual-Principle it is a Being; intellection and Being are
   co-existents. Therefore intellection is a multiple not a unitary and
   that which does not belong to this order can have no Intellection. And
   if we turn to the partial and particular, there is the Intellectual
   form of man, and there is man, there is the Intellectual form of horse
   and there is horse, the Intellectual form of Justice, and Justice.

   Thus all is dual: the unit is a duality and yet again the dual reverts
   to unity.

   That, however, which stands outside all this category can be neither an
   individual unity nor an aggregate of all the duals or in any way a
   duality. How the duals rose from The One is treated elsewhere.

   What stands above Being stands above intellection: it is no weakness in
   it not to know itself, since as pure unity it contains nothing which it
   needs to explore. But it need not even spend any knowing upon things
   outside itself: this which was always the Good of all gives them
   something greater and better than its knowledge of them in giving them
   in their own identity to cling, in whatever measure be possible, to a
   principle thus lofty.
     __________________________________________________________________

  SEVENTH TRACTATE.

  IS THERE AN IDEAL ARCHETYPE OF
  PARTICULAR BEINGS?

   1. We have to examine the question whether there exists an ideal
   archetype of individuals, in other words whether I and every other
   human being go back to the Intellectual, every [living] thing having
   origin and principle There.

   If Socrates, Socrates' soul, is external then the Authentic Socrates --
   to adapt the term -- must be There; that is to say, the individual soul
   has an existence in the Supreme as well as in this world. If there is
   no such permanent endurance and what was Socrates may with change of
   time become another soul and be Pythagoras or someone else -- then the
   individual Socrates has not that existence in the Divine.

   But if the Soul of the individual contains the Reason-Principles of all
   that it traverses, once more all men have their [archetypic] existence
   There: and it is our doctrine that every soul contains all the
   Reason-Principles that exist in the Kosmos: since then the Kosmos
   contains the Reason-Principles not merely of man, but also of all
   individual living things, so must the Soul. Its content of
   Reason-Principles, then, must be limitless, unless there be a
   periodical renovation bounding the boundlessness by the return of a
   former series.

   But if [in virtue of this periodic return] each archetype may be
   reproduced by numerous existents, what need is there that there be
   distinct Reason-Principles and archetypes for each existent in any one
   period? Might not one [archetypal] man suffice for all, and similarly a
   limited number of souls produce a limitless number of men?

   No: one Reason-Principle cannot account for distinct and differing
   individuals: one human being does not suffice as the exemplar for many
   distinct each from the other not merely in material constituents but by
   innumerable variations of ideal type: this is no question of various
   pictures or images reproducing an original Socrates; the beings
   produced differ so greatly as to demand distinct Reason-Principles. The
   entire soul-period conveys with it all the requisite Reason-Principles,
   and so too the same existents appear once more under their action.

   There is no need to baulk at this limitlessness in the Intellectual; it
   is an infinitude having nothing to do with number or part; what we may
   think of it as its outgoing is no other than its characteristic Act.

   2. But individuals are brought into being by the union of the
   Reason-Principles of the parents, male and female: this seems to do
   away with a definite Reason-Principle for each of the offspring: one of
   the parents -- the male let us say -- is the source; and the offspring
   is determined not by Reason-Principles differing from child to child
   but by one only, the father's or that of the father's father.

   No: a distinct Reason-Principle may be the determinant for the child
   since the parent contains all: they would become effective at different
   times.

   And so of the differences among children of the same parents: it is a
   matter of varying dominance: either the offspring -- whether it so
   appears or not -- has been mainly determined by, now, the male, now,
   the female or, while each principle has given itself entire and lies
   there within, yet it effectively moulds one portion of the bodily
   substance rather than another.

   And how [by the theory of a divine archetype of each individual] are
   the differences caused by place to be explained?

   Is the differentiating element to be found in the varying resistance of
   the material of the body?

   No: if this were so, all men with the exception of one only would be
   untrue to nature.

   Difference everywhere is a good, and so there must be differing
   archetypes, though only to evil could be attribute any power in Matter
   to thwart nature by overmastering the perfect Reason-Principles, hidden
   but given, all.

   Still, admitting the diversity of the Reason-principles, why need there
   by as many as there are men born in each Period, once it is granted
   that different beings may take external manifestation under the
   presence of the same principles?

   Under the presence of all; agreed: but with the dominance of the very
   same? That is still open to question.

   May we not take it that there may be identical reproduction from one
   Period to another but not in the same Period?

   3. In the case of twin birth among human beings how can we make out the
   Reason-Principles to be different; and still more when we turn to the
   animals and especially those with litters?

   Where the young are precisely alike, there is one Reason-Principle.

   But this would mean that after all there are not as many Reason
   Principles as separate beings?

   As many as there are of differing beings, differing by something more
   than a mere failure in complete reproduction of their Idea.

   And why may not this [sharing of archetype] occur also in beings
   untouched by differentiation, if indeed there be any such?

   A craftsman even in constructing an object identical with a model must
   envisage that identity in a mental differentiation enabling him to make
   a second thing by bringing in some difference side by side with the
   identity: similarly in nature, where the thing comes about not by
   reasoning but in sole virtue of Reason-Principles, that differentiation
   must be included in the archetypal idea, though it is not in our power
   to perceive the difference.

   The consideration of Quantity brings the same result:

   If production is undetermined in regard to Quantity, each thing has its
   distinct Reason-Principle: if there is a measured system the Quantity
   has been determined by the unrolling and unfolding of the
   Reason-Principles of all the existences.

   Thus when the universe has reached its term, there will be a fresh
   beginning, since the entire Quantity which the Kosmos is to exhibit,
   every item that is to emerge in its course, all is laid up from the
   first in the Being that contains the Reason-Principles.

   Are we, then, looking to the brute realm, to hold that there are as
   many Reason-Principles as distinct creatures born in a litter?

   Why not? There is nothing alarming about such limitlessness in
   generative forces and in Reason-Principles, when Soul is there to
   sustain all.

   As in Soul [principle of Life] so in Divine Mind [principle of Idea]
   there is this infinitude of recurring generative powers; the Beings
   there are unfailing.
     __________________________________________________________________

  EIGHTH TRACTATE.

  ON THE INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY.

   1. It is a principle with us that one who has attained to the vision of
   the Intellectual Beauty and grasped the beauty of the Authentic
   Intellect will be able also to come to understand the Father and
   Transcendent of that Divine Being. It concerns us, then, to try to see
   and say, for ourselves and as far as such matters may be told, how the
   Beauty of the divine Intellect and of the Intellectual Kosmos may be
   revealed to contemplation.

   Let us go to the realm of magnitudes: Suppose two blocks of stone lying
   side by side: one is unpatterned, quite untouched by art; the other has
   been minutely wrought by the craftsman's hands into some statue of god
   or man, a Grace or a Muse, or if a human being, not a portrait but a
   creation in which the sculptor's art has concentrated all loveliness.

   Now it must be seen that the stone thus brought under the artist's hand
   to the beauty of form is beautiful not as stone -- for so the crude
   block would be as pleasant -- but in virtue of the form or idea
   introduced by the art. This form is not in the material; it is in the
   designer before ever it enters the stone; and the artificer holds it
   not by his equipment of eyes and hands but by his participation in his
   art. The beauty, therefore, exists in a far higher state in the art;
   for it does not come over integrally into the work; that original
   beauty is not transferred; what comes over is a derivative and a minor:
   and even that shows itself upon the statue not integrally and with
   entire realization of intention but only in so far as it has subdued
   the resistance of the material.

   Art, then, creating in the image of its own nature and content, and
   working by the Idea or Reason-Principle of the beautiful object it is
   to produce, must itself be beautiful in a far higher and purer degree
   since it is the seat and source of that beauty, indwelling in the art,
   which must naturally be more complete than any comeliness of the
   external. In the degree in which the beauty is diffused by entering
   into matter, it is so much the weaker than that concentrated in unity;
   everything that reaches outwards is the less for it, strength less
   strong, heat less hot, every power less potent, and so beauty less
   beautiful.

   Then again every prime cause must be, within itself, more powerful than
   its effect can be: the musical does not derive from an unmusical source
   but from music; and so the art exhibited in the material work derives
   from an art yet higher.

   Still the arts are not to be slighted on the ground that they create by
   imitation of natural objects; for, to begin with, these natural objects
   are themselves imitations; then, we must recognise that they give no
   bare reproduction of the thing seen but go back to the Ideas from which
   Nature itself derives, and, furthermore, that much of their work is all
   their own; they are holders of beauty and add where nature is lacking.
   Thus Pheidias wrought the Zeus upon no model among things of sense but
   by apprehending what form Zeus must take if he chose to become manifest
   to sight.

   2. But let us leave the arts and consider those works produced by
   Nature and admitted to be naturally beautiful which the creations of
   art are charged with imitating, all reasoning life and unreasoning
   things alike, but especially the consummate among them, where the
   moulder and maker has subdued the material and given the form he
   desired. Now what is the beauty here? It has nothing to do with the
   blood or the menstrual process: either there is also a colour and form
   apart from all this, or there is nothing unless sheer ugliness or a
   bare recipient, as it were the mere Matter of beauty.

   Whence shone forth the beauty of Helen, battle-sought; or of all those
   women like in loveliness to Aphrodite; or of Aphrodite herself; or of
   any human being that has been perfect in beauty; or of any of these
   gods manifest to sight, or unseen but carrying what would be beauty if
   we saw?

   In all these is it not the Idea, something of that realm but
   communicated to the produced from within the producer just as in works
   of art, we held, it is communicated from the arts to their creations?
   Now we can surely not believe that, while the made thing and the Idea
   thus impressed upon Matter are beautiful, yet the Idea not so alloyed
   but resting still with the creator -- the Idea primal, immaterial,
   firmly a unity -- is not Beauty.

   If material extension were in itself the ground of beauty, then the
   creating principle, being without extension, could not be beautiful:
   but beauty cannot be made to depend upon magnitude since, whether in a
   large object or a small, the one Idea equally moves and forms the mind
   by its inherent power. A further indication is that as long as the
   object remains outside us we know nothing of it; it affects us by
   entry; but only as an Idea can it enter through the eyes which are not
   of scope to take an extended mass: we are, no doubt, simultaneously
   possessed of the magnitude which, however, we take in not as mass but
   by an elaboration upon the presented form.

   Then again the principle producing the beauty must be, itself, ugly,
   neutral or beautiful: ugly, it could not produce the opposite; neutral,
   why should its product be the one rather than the other? The Nature,
   then, which creates things so lovely must be itself of a far earlier
   beauty; we, undisciplined in discernment of the inward, knowing nothing
   of it, run after the outer, never understanding that it is the inner
   which stirs us; we are in the case of one who sees his own reflection
   but not realizing whence it comes goes in pursuit of it.

   But that the thing we are pursuing is something different and that the
   beauty is not in the concrete object is manifest from the beauty there
   is in matters of study, in conduct and custom; briefly in soul or mind.
   And it is precisely here that the greater beauty lies, perceived
   whenever you look to the wisdom in a man and delight in it, not wasting
   attention on the face, which may be hideous, but passing all appearance
   by and catching only at the inner comeliness, the truly personal; if
   you are still unmoved and cannot acknowledge beauty under such
   conditions, then looking to your own inner being you will find no
   beauty to delight you and it will be futile in that state to seek the
   greater vision, for you will be questing it through the ugly and
   impure.

   This is why such matters are not spoken of to everyone; you, if you are
   conscious of beauty within, remember.

   3. Thus there is in the Nature-Principle itself an Ideal archetype of
   the beauty that is found in material forms and, of that archetype
   again, the still more beautiful archetype in Soul, source of that in
   Nature. In the proficient soul this is brighter and of more advanced
   loveliness: adorning the soul and bringing to it a light from that
   greater light which is beauty primally, its immediate presence sets the
   soul reflecting upon the quality of this prior, the archetype which has
   no such entries, and is present nowhere but remains in itself alone,
   and thus is not even to be called a Reason-Principle but is the
   creative source of the very first Reason-Principle which is the Beauty
   to which Soul serves as Matter.

   This prior, then, is the Intellectual-Principle, the veritable, abiding
   and not fluctuant since not taking intellectual quality from outside
   itself. By what image thus, can we represent it? We have nowhere to go
   but to what is less. Only from itself can we take an image of it; that
   is, there can be no representation of it, except in the sense that we
   represent gold by some portion of gold -- purified, either actually or
   mentally, if it be impure -- insisting at the same time that this is
   not the total thing-gold, but merely the particular gold of a
   particular parcel. In the same way we learn in this matter from the
   purified Intellect in ourselves or, if you like, from the Gods and the
   glory of the Intellect in them.

   For assuredly all the Gods are august and beautiful in a beauty beyond
   our speech. And what makes them so? Intellect; and especially Intellect
   operating within them [the divine sun and stars] to visibility. It is
   not through the loveliness of their corporeal forms: even those that
   have body are not gods by that beauty; it is in virtue of Intellect
   that they, too, are gods, and as gods beautiful. They do not veer
   between wisdom and folly: in the immunity of Intellect unmoving and
   pure, they are wise always, all-knowing, taking cognisance not of the
   human but of their own being and of all that lies within the
   contemplation of Intellect. Those of them whose dwelling is in the
   heavens, are ever in this meditation -- what task prevents them? -- and
   from afar they look, too, into that further heaven by a lifting of the
   head. The Gods belonging to that higher Heaven itself, they whose
   station is upon it and in it, see and know in virtue of their
   omnipresence to it. For all There is heaven; earth is heaven, and sea
   heaven; and animal and plant and man; all is the heavenly content of
   that heaven: and the Gods in it, despising neither men nor anything
   else that is there where all is of the heavenly order, traverse all
   that country and all space in peace.

   4. To "live at ease" is There; and, to these divine beings, verity is
   mother and nurse, existence and sustenance; all that is not of process
   but of authentic being they see, and themselves in all: for all is
   transparent, nothing dark, nothing resistant; every being is lucid to
   every other, in breadth and depth; light runs through light. And each
   of them contains all within itself, and at the same time sees all in
   every other, so that everywhere there is all, and all is all and each
   all, and infinite the glory. Each of them is great; the small is great;
   the sun, There, is all the stars; and every star, again, is all the
   stars and sun. While some one manner of being is dominant in each, all
   are mirrored in every other.

   Movement There is pure [as self-caused] for the moving principle is not
   a separate thing to complicate it as it speeds.

   So, too, Repose is not troubled, for there is no admixture of the
   unstable; and the Beauty is all beauty since it is not merely resident
   [as an attribute or addition] in some beautiful object. Each There
   walks upon no alien soil; its place is its essential self; and, as each
   moves, so to speak, towards what is Above, it is attended by the very
   ground from which it starts: there is no distinguishing between the
   Being and the Place; all is Intellect, the Principle and the ground on
   which it stands, alike. Thus we might think that our visible sky [the
   ground or place of the stars], lit, as it is, produces the light which
   reaches us from it, though of course this is really produced by the
   stars [as it were, by the Principles of light alone, not also by the
   ground as the analogy would require].

   In our realm all is part rising from part and nothing can be more than
   partial; but There each being is an eternal product of a whole and is
   at once a whole and an individual manifesting as part but, to the keen
   vision There, known for the whole it is.

   The myth of Lynceus seeing into the very deeps of the earth tells us of
   those eyes in the divine. No weariness overtakes this vision, which yet
   brings no such satiety as would call for its ending; for there never
   was a void to be filled so that, with the fulness and the attainment of
   purpose, the sense of sufficiency be induced: nor is there any such
   incongruity within the divine that one Being there could be repulsive
   to another: and of course all There are unchangeable. This absence of
   satisfaction means only a satisfaction leading to no distaste for that
   which produces it; to see is to look the more, since for them to
   continue in the contemplation of an infinite self and of infinite
   objects is but to acquiesce in the bidding of their nature.

   Life, pure, is never a burden; how then could there be weariness There
   where the living is most noble? That very life is wisdom, not a wisdom
   built up by reasonings but complete from the beginning, suffering no
   lack which could set it enquiring, a wisdom primal, unborrowed, not
   something added to the Being, but its very essence. No wisdom, thus, is
   greater; this is the authentic knowing, assessor to the divine
   Intellect as projected into manifestation simultaneously with it; thus,
   in the symbolic saying, Justice is assessor to Zeus.

   [Perfect wisdom] for all the Principles of this order, dwelling There,
   are as it were visible images protected from themselves, so that all
   becomes an object of contemplation to contemplators immeasurably
   blessed. The greatness and power of the wisdom There we may know from
   this, that is embraces all the real Beings, and has made all, and all
   follow it, and yet that it is itself those beings, which sprang into
   being with it, so that all is one, and the essence There is wisdom. If
   we have failed to understand, it is that we have thought of knowledge
   as a mass of theorems and an accumulation of propositions, though that
   is false even for our sciences of the sense-realm. But in case this
   should be questioned, we may leave our own sciences for the present,
   and deal with the knowing in the Supreme at which Plato glances where
   he speaks of "that knowledge which is not a stranger in something
   strange to it" -- though in what sense, he leaves us to examine and
   declare, if we boast ourselves worthy of the discussion. This is
   probably our best starting-point.

   5. All that comes to be, work of nature or of craft, some wisdom has
   made: everywhere a wisdom presides at a making.

   No doubt the wisdom of the artist may be the guide of the work; it is
   sufficient explanation of the wisdom exhibited in the arts; but the
   artist himself goes back, after all, to that wisdom in Nature which is
   embodied in himself; and this is not a wisdom built up of theorems but
   one totality, not a wisdom consisting of manifold detail co-ordinated
   into a unity but rather a unity working out into detail.

   Now, if we could think of this as the primal wisdom, we need look no
   further, since, at that, we have discovered a principle which is
   neither a derivative nor a "stranger in something strange to it." But
   if we are told that, while this Reason-Principle is in Nature, yet
   Nature itself is its source, we ask how Nature came to possess it; and,
   if Nature derived it from some other source, we ask what that other
   source may be; if, on the contrary, the principle is self-sprung, we
   need look no further: but if we are referred to the
   Intellectual-Principle we must make clear whether the
   Intellectual-Principle engendered the wisdom: if we learn that it did,
   we ask whence: if from itself, then inevitably, it is itself Wisdom.

   The true Wisdom, then [found to be identical with the
   Intellectual-Principle] is Real Being; and Real Being is Wisdom; it is
   wisdom that gives value to Real Being; and Being is Real in virtue of
   its origin in wisdom. It follows that all forms of existence not
   possessing wisdom are, indeed, Beings in right of the wisdom which went
   to their forming but, as not in themselves possessing it, are not Real
   Beings.

   We cannot therefore think that the divine Beings of that sphere, or the
   other supremely blessed There, need look to our apparatus of science:
   all of that realm, all is noble image, such images as we may conceive
   to lie within the soul of the wise -- but There not as inscription but
   as authentic existence. The ancients had this in mind when they
   declared the Ideas to be Beings, Essentials.

   6. Similarly, as it seems to me, the wise of Egypt -- whether in
   precise knowledge or by a prompting of nature -- indicated the truth
   where, in their effort towards philosophical statement, they left aside
   the writing-forms that take in the detail of words and sentences --
   those characters that represent sounds and convey the propositions of
   reasoning -- and drew pictures instead, engraving in the temple --
   inscriptions a separate image for every separate item: thus they
   exhibited the mode in which the Supreme goes forth.

   For each manifestation of knowledge and wisdom is a distinct image, an
   object in itself, an immediate unity, not as aggregate of discursive
   reasoning and detailed willing. Later from this wisdom in unity there
   appears, in another form of being, an image, already less compact,
   which announces the original in an outward stage and seeks the causes
   by which things are such that the wonder rises how a generated world
   can be so excellent.

   For, one who knows must declare his wonder that this Wisdom, while not
   itself containing the causes by which Being exists and takes such
   excellence, yet imparts them to the entities produced in Being's realm.
   This excellence whose necessity is scarcely or not at all manifest to
   search, exists, if we could but find it out, before all searching and
   reasoning.

   What I say may be considered in one chief thing, and thence applied to
   all the particular entities:

   7. Consider the universe: we are agreed that its existence and its
   nature come to it from beyond itself; are we, now, to imagine that its
   maker first thought it out in detail -- the earth, and its necessary
   situation in the middle; water and, again, its position as lying upon
   the earth; all the other elements and objects up to the sky in due
   place and order; living beings with their appropriate forms as we know
   them, their inner organs and their outer limbs -- and that having thus
   appointed every item beforehand, he then set about the execution?

   Such designing was not even possible; how could the plan for a universe
   come to one that had never looked outward? Nor could he work on
   material gathered from elsewhere as our craftsmen do, using hands and
   tools; feet and hands are of the later order.

   One way, only, remains: all things must exist in something else; of
   that prior -- since there is no obstacle, all being continuous within
   the realm of reality -- there has suddenly appeared a sign, an image,
   whether given forth directly or through the ministry of soul or of some
   phase of soul, matters nothing for the moment: thus the entire
   aggregate of existence springs from the divine world, in greater beauty
   There because There unmingled but mingled here.

   From the beginning to end all is gripped by the Forms of the
   Intellectual Realm: Matter itself is held by the Ideas of the elements
   and to these Ideas are added other Ideas and others again, so that it
   is hard to work down to crude Matter beneath all that sheathing of
   Idea. Indeed since Matter itself is in its degree, an Idea -- the
   lowest -- all this universe is Idea and there is nothing that is not
   Idea as the archetype was. And all is made silently, since nothing had
   part in the making but Being and Idea further reason why creation went
   without toil. The Exemplar was the Idea of an All, and so an All must
   come into being.

   Thus nothing stood in the way of the Idea, and even now it dominates,
   despite all the clash of things: the creation is not hindered on its
   way even now; it stands firm in virtue of being All. To me, moreover,
   it seems that if we ourselves were archetypes, Ideas, veritable Being,
   and the Idea with which we construct here were our veritable Essence,
   then our creative power too would toillessly effect its purpose: as man
   now stands, he does not produce in his work a true image of himself:
   become man, he has ceased to be the All: ceasing to be man -- we read
   -- "he soars aloft and administers the Kosmos entire"; restored to the
   All he is maker of the All.

   But -- to our immediate purpose -- it is possible to give a reason why
   the earth is set in the midst and why it is round and why the ecliptic
   runs precisely as it does, but, looking to the creating principle, we
   cannot say that because this was the way therefore things were so
   planned: we can say only that because the All is what it is, therefore
   there is a total of good; the causing principle, we might put it,
   reached the conclusion before all formal reasoning and not from any
   premises, not by sequence or plan but before either, since all of that
   order is later, all reason, demonstration, persuasion.

   Since there is a Source, all the created must spring from it and in
   accordance with it; and we are rightly told not to go seeking the
   causes impelling a Source to produce, especially when this is the
   perfectly sufficient Source and identical with the Term: a Source which
   is Source and Term must be the All-Unity, complete in itself.

   8. This then is Beauty primally: it is entire and omnipresent as an
   entirety; and therefore in none of its parts or members lacking in
   beauty; beautiful thus beyond denial. Certainly it cannot be anything
   [be, for example, Beauty] without being wholly that thing; it can be
   nothing which it is to possess partially or in which it utterly fails
   [and therefore it must entirely be Beauty entire].

   If this principle were not beautiful, what other could be? Its prior
   does not deign to be beautiful; that which is the first to manifest
   itself -- Form and object of vision to the intellect -- cannot but be
   lovely to see. It is to indicate this that Plato, drawing on something
   well within our observation, represents the Creator as approving the
   work he has achieved: the intention is to make us feel the lovable
   beauty of the autotype and of the Divine Idea; for to admire a
   representation is to admire the original upon which it was made.

   It is not surprising if we fail to recognise what is passing within us:
   lovers, and those in general that admire beauty here, do not stay to
   reflect that it is to be traced, as of course it must be, to the Beauty
   There. That the admiration of the Demiurge is to be referred to the
   Ideal Exemplar is deliberately made evident by the rest of the passage:
   "He admired; and determined to bring the work into still closer
   likeness with the Exemplar": he makes us feel the magnificent beauty of
   the Exemplar by telling us that the Beauty sprung from this world is,
   itself, a copy from That.

   And indeed if the divine did not exist, the transcendently beautiful,
   in a beauty beyond all thought, what could be lovelier than the things
   we see? Certainly no reproach can rightly be brought against this world
   save only that it is not That.

   9. Let us, then, make a mental picture of our universe: each member
   shall remain what it is, distinctly apart; yet all is to form, as far
   as possible, a complete unity so that whatever comes into view shall
   show as if it were the surface of the orb over all, bringing
   immediately with it the vision, on the one plane, of the sun and of all
   the stars with earth and sea and all living things as if exhibited upon
   a transparent globe.

   Bring this vision actually before your sight, so that there shall be in
   your mind the gleaming representation of a sphere, a picture holding
   sprung, themselves, of that universe and repose or some at rest, some
   in motion. Keep this sphere before you, and from it imagine another, a
   sphere stripped of magnitude and of spatial differences; cast out your
   inborn sense of Matter, taking care not merely to attenuate it: call on
   God, maker of the sphere whose image you now hold, and pray Him to
   enter. And may He come bringing His own Universe with all the Gods that
   dwell in it -- He who is the one God and all the gods, where each is
   all, blending into a unity, distinct in powers but all one god in
   virtue of that one divine power of many facets.

   More truly, this is the one God who is all the gods; for, in the coming
   to be of all those, this, the one, has suffered no diminishing. He and
   all have one existence while each again is distinct. It is distinction
   by state without interval: there is no outward form to set one here and
   another there and to prevent any from being an entire identity; yet
   there is no sharing of parts from one to another. Nor is each of those
   divine wholes a power in fragment, a power totalling to the sum of the
   measurable segments: the divine is one all-power, reaching out to
   infinity, powerful to infinity; and so great is God that his very
   members are infinites. What place can be named to which He does not
   reach?

   Great, too, is this firmament of ours and all the powers constellated
   within it, but it would be greater still, unspeakably, but that there
   is inbound in it something of the petty power of body; no doubt the
   powers of fire and other bodily substances might themselves be thought
   very great, but in fact, it is through their failure in the true power
   that we see them burning, destroying, wearing things away, and slaving
   towards the production of life; they destroy because they are
   themselves in process of destruction, and they produce because they
   belong to the realm of the produced.

   The power in that other world has merely Being and Beauty of Being.
   Beauty without Being could not be, nor Being voided of Beauty:
   abandoned of Beauty, Being loses something of its essence. Being is
   desirable because it is identical with Beauty; and Beauty is loved
   because it is Being. How then can we debate which is the cause of the
   other, where the nature is one? The very figment of Being needs some
   imposed image of Beauty to make it passable and even to ensure its
   existence; it exists to the degree in which it has taken some share in
   the beauty of Idea; and the more deeply it has drawn on this, the less
   imperfect it is, precisely because the nature which is essentially the
   beautiful has entered into it the more intimately.

   10. This is why Zeus, although the oldest of the gods and their
   sovereign, advances first [in the Phaidros myth] towards that vision,
   followed by gods and demigods and such souls as are of strength to see.
   That Being appears before them from some unseen place and rising
   loftily over them pours its light upon all things, so that all gleams
   in its radiance; it upholds some beings, and they see; the lower are
   dazzled and turn away, unfit to gaze upon that sun, the trouble falling
   the more heavily on those most remote.

   Of those looking upon that Being and its content, and able to see, all
   take something but not all the same vision always: intently gazing, one
   sees the fount and principle of Justice, another is filled with the
   sight of Moral Wisdom, the original of that quality as found, sometimes
   at least, among men, copied by them in their degree from the divine
   virtue which, covering all the expanse, so to speak, of the
   Intellectual Realm is seen, last attainment of all, by those who have
   known already many splendid visions.

   The gods see, each singly and all as one. So, too, the souls; they see
   all There in right of being sprung, themselves, of that universe and
   therefore including all from beginning to end and having their
   existence There if only by that phase which belongs inherently to the
   Divine, though often too they are There entire, those of them that have
   not incurred separation.

   This vision Zeus takes, and it is for such of us, also, as share his
   love and appropriate our part in the Beauty There, the final object of
   all seeing, the entire beauty upon all things; for all There sheds
   radiance, and floods those that have found their way thither so that
   they too become beautiful; thus it will often happen that men climbing
   heights where the soil has taken a yellow glow will themselves appear
   so, borrowing colour from the place on which they move. The colour
   flowering on that other height we speak of is Beauty; or rather all
   There is light and beauty, through and through, for the beauty is no
   mere bloom upon the surface.

   To those that do not see entire, the immediate impression is alone
   taken into account; but those drunken with this wine, filled with the
   nectar, all their soul penetrated by this beauty, cannot remain mere
   gazers: no longer is there a spectator outside gazing on an outside
   spectacle; the clear-eyed hold the vision within themselves, though,
   for the most part, they have no idea that it is within but look towards
   it as to something beyond them and see it as an object of vision caught
   by a direction of the will.

   All that one sees as a spectacle is still external; one must bring the
   vision within and see no longer in that mode of separation but as we
   know ourselves; thus a man filled with a god -- possessed by Apollo or
   by one of the Muses -- need no longer look outside for his vision of
   the divine being; it is but finding the strength to see divinity
   within.

   11. Similarly any one, unable to see himself, but possessed by that
   God, has but to bring that divine -- within before his consciousness
   and at once he sees an image of himself, himself lifted to a better
   beauty: now let him ignore that image, lovely though it is, and sink
   into a perfect self-identity, no such separation remaining; at once he
   forms a multiple unity with the God silently present; in the degree of
   his power and will, the two become one; should he turn back to the
   former duality, still he is pure and remains very near to the God; he
   has but to look again and the same presence is there.

   This conversion brings gain: at the first stage, that of separation, a
   man is aware of self; but, retreating inwards, he becomes possessor of
   all; he puts sense away behind him in dread of the separated life and
   becomes one in the Divine; if he plans to see in separation, he sets
   himself outside.

   The novice must hold himself constantly under some image of the Divine
   Being and seek in the light of a clear conception; knowing thus, in a
   deep conviction, whither he is going -- into what a sublimity he
   penetrates -- he must give himself forthwith to the inner and, radiant
   with the Divine Intellections [with which he is now one], be no longer
   the seer but, as that place has made him, the seen.

   Still, we will be told, one cannot be in beauty and yet fail to see it.
   The very contrary: to see the divine as something external is to be
   outside of it; to become it is to be most truly in beauty: since sight
   deals with the external, there can here be no vision unless in the
   sense of identification with the object.

   And this identification amounts to a self-knowing, a
   self-consciousness, guarded by the fear of losing the self in the
   desire of a too wide awareness.

   It must be remembered that sensations of the ugly and evil impress us
   more violently than those of what is agreeable and yet leave less
   knowledge as the residue of the shock: sickness makes the rougher mark,
   but health, tranquilly present, explains itself better; it takes the
   first place, it is the natural thing, it belongs to our being; illness
   is alien, unnatural and thus makes itself felt by its very incongruity,
   while the other conditions are native and we take no notice. Such being
   our nature, we are most completely aware of ourselves when we are most
   completely identified with the object of our knowledge.

   This is why in that other sphere, when we are deepest in that knowledge
   by intellection, we are aware of none; we are expecting some impression
   on sense, which has nothing to report since it has seen nothing and
   never could in that order see anything. The unbelieving element is
   sense; it is the other, the Intellectual-Principle, that sees; and if
   this too doubted, it could not even credit its own existence, for it
   can never stand away and with bodily eyes apprehend itself as a visible
   object.

   12. We have told how this vision is to be procured, whether by the mode
   of separation or in identity: now, seen in either way, what does it
   give to report?

   The vision has been of God in travail of a beautiful offspring, God
   engendering a universe within himself in a painless labour and --
   rejoiced in what he has brought into being, proud of his children --
   keeping all closely by Him, for pleasure He has in his radiance and in
   theirs.

   Of this offspring -- all beautiful, but most beautiful those that have
   remained within -- only one has become manifest without; from him
   [Zeus, sovereign over the visible universe] the youngest born, we may
   gather, as from some image, the greatness of the Father and of the
   Brothers that remain within the Father's house.

   Still the manifested God cannot think that he has come forth in vain
   from the father; for through him another universe has arisen, beautiful
   as the image of beauty, and it could not be' lawful that Beauty and
   Being should fail of a beautiful image.

   This second Kosmos at every point copies the archetype: it has life and
   being in copy, and has beauty as springing from that diviner world. In
   its character of image it holds, too, that divine perpetuity without
   which it would only at times be truly representative and sometimes fail
   like a construction of art; for every image whose existence lies in the
   nature of things must stand during the entire existence of the
   archetype.

   Hence it is false to put an end to the visible sphere as long as the
   Intellectual endures, or to found it upon a decision taken by its maker
   at some given moment.

   That teaching shirks the penetration of such a making as is here
   involved: it fails to see that as long as the Supreme is radiant there
   can be no failing of its sequel but, that existing, all exists. And --
   since the necessity of conveying our meaning compels such terms -- the
   Supreme has existed for ever and for ever will exist.

   13. The God fettered [as in the Kronos Myth] to an unchanging identity
   leaves the ordering of this universe to his son (to Zeus), for it could
   not be in his character to neglect his rule within the divine sphere,
   and, as though sated with the Authentic-Beauty, seek a lordship too
   recent and too poor for his might. Ignoring this lower world, Kronos
   [Intellectual-Principle] claims for his own father [Ouranoo, the
   Absolute, or One] with all the upward-tending between them: and he
   counts all that tends to the inferior, beginning from his son [Zeus,
   the All-Soul], as ranking beneath him. Thus he holds a mid position
   determined on the one side by the differentiation implied in the
   severance from the very highest and, on the other, by that which keeps
   him apart from the link between himself and the lower: he stands
   between a greater father and an inferior son. But since that father is
   too lofty to be thought of under the name of Beauty, the second God
   remains the primally beautiful.

   Soul also has beauty, but is less beautiful than Intellect as being its
   image and therefore, though beautiful in nature, taking increase of
   beauty by looking to that original. Since then the All-Soul -- to use
   the more familiar term -- since Aphrodite herself is so beautiful, what
   name can we give to that other? If Soul is so lovely in its own right,
   of what quality must that prior be? And since its being is derived,
   what must that power be from which the Soul takes the double beauty,
   the borrowed and the inherent?

   We ourselves possess beauty when we are true to our own being; our
   ugliness is in going over to another order; our self-knowledge, that is
   to say, is our beauty; in self-ignorance we are ugly.

   Thus beauty is of the Divine and comes Thence only.

   Do these considerations suffice to a clear understanding of the
   Intellectual Sphere, or must we make yet another attempt by another
   road?
     __________________________________________________________________

  NINTH TRACTATE.

  THE INTELLECTUAL-PRINCIPLE, THE IDEAS, AND
  THE AUTHENTIC EXISTENCE.

   1. All human beings from birth onward live to the realm of sense more
   than to the Intellectual.

   Forced of necessity to attend first to the material, some of them elect
   to abide by that order and, their life throughout, make its concerns
   their first and their last; the sweet and the bitter of sense are their
   good and evil; they feel they have done all if they live along pursuing
   the one and barring the doors to the other. And those of them that
   pretend to reasoning have adopted this as their philosophy; they are
   like the heavier birds which have incorporated much from the earth and
   are so weighted down that they cannot fly high for all the wings Nature
   has given them.

   Others do indeed lift themselves a little above the earth; the better
   in their soul urges them from the pleasant to the nobler, but they are
   not of power to see the highest and so, in despair of any surer ground,
   they fall back in virtue's name, upon those actions and options of the
   lower from which they sought to escape.

   But there is a third order -- those godlike men who, in their mightier
   power, in the keenness of their sight, have clear vision of the
   splendour above and rise to it from among the cloud and fog of earth
   and hold firmly to that other world, looking beyond all here, delighted
   in the place of reality, their native land, like a man returning after
   long wanderings to the pleasant ways of his own country.

   2. What is this other place and how it is accessible?

   It is to be reached by those who, born with the nature of the lover,
   are also authentically philosophic by inherent temper; in pain of love
   towards beauty but not held by material loveliness, taking refuge from
   that in things whose beauty is of the soul -- such things as virtue,
   knowledge, institutions, law and custom -- and thence, rising still a
   step, reach to the source of this loveliness of the Soul, thence to
   whatever be above that again, until the uttermost is reached. The
   First, the Principle whose beauty is self-springing: this attained,
   there is an end to the pain inassuageable before.

   But how is the ascent to be begun? Whence comes the power? In what
   thought is this love to find its guide?

   The guiding thought is this: that the beauty perceived on material
   things is borrowed.

   The pattern giving beauty to the corporeal rests upon it as Idea to its
   Matter and the substrate may change and from being pleasant become
   distasteful, a sign, in all reason, that the beauty comes by
   participation.

   Now, what is this that gives grace to the corporeal?

   Two causes in their degree; the participation in beauty and the power
   of Soul, the maker, which has imprinted that form.

   We ask then is soul, of itself, a thing of beauty: we find it is not
   since differences are manifest, one Soul wise and lovely, another
   foolish and ugly: soul-beauty is constituted by wisdom.

   The question thus becomes, "What principle is the giver of wisdom to
   the soul? and the only answer is "The Intellectual-Principle," the
   veritably intellectual, wise without intermission and therefore
   beautiful of itself.

   But does even this suffice for our First?

   No; we must look still inward beyond the Intellectual, which, from our
   point of approach, stands before the Supreme Beginning, in whose
   forecourt, as it were, it announces in its own being the entire content
   of the Good, that prior of all, locked in unity, of which this is the
   expression already touched by multiplicity.

   3. We will have to examine this Nature, the Intellectual, which our
   reasoning identifies as the authentically existent and the veritable
   essential: but first we must take another path and make certain that
   such a principle does necessarily exist.

   Perhaps it is ridiculous to set out enquiring whether an
   Intellectual-Principle has place in the total of being: but there may
   be some to hesitate even as to this and certainly there will be the
   question whether it is as we describe it, whether it is a separate
   existence, whether it actually is the real beings, whether it is the
   seat of the Ideas; to this we now address ourselves.

   All that we see, and describe as having existence, we know to be
   compound; hand-wrought or compacted by nature, nothing is simplex. Now
   the hand-wrought, with its metal or stone or wood, is not realized out
   of these materials until the appropriate craft has produced statue,
   house or bed, by imparting the particular idea from its own content.
   Similarly with natural forms of being; those including several
   constituents, compound bodies as we call them, may be analysed into the
   materials and the Idea imposed upon the total; the human being, for
   example, into soul and body; and the human body into the four elements.
   Finding everything to be a compound of Matter and shaping principle --
   since the Matter of the elements is of itself shapeless -- you will
   enquire whence this forming idea comes; and you will ask whether in the
   soul we recognise a simplex or whether this also has constituents,
   something representing Matter and something else -- the
   Intellectual-Principle in it -- representing Idea, the one
   corresponding to the shape actually on the statue, the other to the
   artist giving the shape.

   Applying the same method to the total of things, here too we discover
   the Intellectual-Principle and this we set down as veritably the maker
   and creator of the All. The underly has adopted, we see, certain shapes
   by which it becomes fire, water, air, earth; and these shapes have been
   imposed upon it by something else. This other is Soul which, hovering
   over the Four [the elements], imparts the pattern of the Kosmos, the
   Ideas for which it has itself received from the Intellectual-Principle
   as the soul or mind of the craftsman draws upon his craft for the plan
   of his work.

   The Intellectual-Principle is in one phase the Form of the soul, its
   shape; in another phase it is the giver of the shape -- the sculptor,
   possessing inherently what is given -- imparting to soul nearly the
   authentic reality while what body receives is but image and imitation.

   4. But, soul reached, why need we look higher; why not make this The
   First?

   A main reason is that the Intellectual-Principle is at once something
   other and something more powerful than Soul and that the more powerful
   is in the nature of things the prior. For it is certainly not true, as
   people imagine, that the soul, brought to perfection, produces
   Intellect. How could that potentiality come to actuality unless there
   be, first, an effective principle to induce the actualization which,
   left to chance, might never occur?

   The Firsts must be supposed to exist in actuality, looking to nothing
   else, self-complete. Anything incomplete must be sequent upon these,
   and take its completion from the principles engendering it which, like
   fathers, labour in the improvement of an offspring born imperfect: the
   produced is a Matter to the producing principle and is worked over by
   it into a shapely perfection.

   And if, further, soul is passible while something impassible there must
   be or by the mere passage of time all wears away, here too we are led
   to something above soul.

   Again there must be something prior to Soul because Soul is in the
   world and there must be something outside a world in which, all being
   corporeal and material, nothing has enduring reality: failing such a
   prior, neither man nor the Ideas would be eternal or have true
   identity.

   These and many other considerations establish the necessary existence
   of an Intellectual-Principle prior to Soul.

   5. This Intellectual-Principle, if the term is to convey the truth,
   must be understood to be not a principle merely potential and not one
   maturing from unintelligence to intelligence -- that would simply send
   us seeking, once more, a necessary prior -- but a principle which is
   intelligence in actuality and in eternity.

   Now a principle whose wisdom is not borrowed must derive from itself
   any intellection it may make; and anything it may possess within itself
   it can hold only from itself: it follows that, intellective by its own
   resource and upon its own content, it is itself the very things on
   which its intellection acts.

   For supposing its essence to be separable from its intellection and the
   objects of its intellection to be not itself, then its essence would be
   unintellectual; and it would be intellectual not actually but
   potentially. The intellection and its object must then be inseparable
   -- however the habit induced by our conditions may tempt us to
   distinguish, There too, the thinker from the thought.

   What then is its characteristic Act and what the intellection which
   makes knower and known here identical?

   Clearly, as authentic Intellection, it has authentic intellection of
   the authentically existent, and establishes their existence. Therefore
   it is the Authentic Beings.

   Consider: It must perceive them either somewhere else or within itself
   as its very self: the somewhere else is impossible -- where could that
   be? -- they are therefore itself and the content of itself.

   Its objects certainly cannot be the things of sense, as people think;
   no First could be of the sense-known order; for in things of sense the
   Idea is but an image of the authentic, and every Idea thus derivative
   and exiled traces back to that original and is no more than an image of
   it.

   Further, if the Intellectual-Principle is to be the maker of this All,
   it cannot make by looking outside itself to what does not yet exist.
   The Authentic Beings must, then, exist before this All, no copies made
   on a model but themselves archetypes, primals, and the essence of the
   Intellectual-Principle.

   We may be told that Reason-Principles suffice [to the subsistence of
   the All]: but then these, clearly, must be eternal; and if eternal, if
   immune, then they must exist in an Intellectual-Principle such as we
   have indicated, a principle earlier than condition, than nature, than
   soul, than anything whose existence is potential for contingent].

   The Intellectual-Principle, therefore, is itself the authentic
   existences, not a knower knowing them in some sphere foreign to it. The
   Authentic Beings, thus, exist neither before nor after it: it is the
   primal legislator to Being or, rather, is itself the law of Being. Thus
   it is true that "Intellectual and Being are identical"; in the
   immaterial the knowledge of the thing is the thing. And this is the
   meaning of the dictum "I sought myself," namely as one of the Beings:
   it also bears on reminiscence.

   For none of the Beings is outside the Intellectual-Principle or in
   space; they remain for ever in themselves, accepting no change, no
   decay, and by that are the authentically existent. Things that arise
   and fall away draw on real being as something to borrow from; they are
   not of the real; the true being is that on which they draw.

   It is by participation that the sense-known has the being we ascribe to
   it; the underlying nature has taken its shape from elsewhere; thus
   bronze and wood are shaped into what we see by means of an image
   introduced by sculpture or carpentry; the craft permeates the materials
   while remaining integrally apart from the material and containing in
   itself the reality of statue or couch. And it is so, of course, with
   all corporeal things.

   This universe, characteristically participant in images, shows how the
   image differs from the authentic beings: against the variability of the
   one order, there stands the unchanging quality of the other,
   self-situate, not needing space because having no magnitude, holding an
   existent intellective and self-sufficing. The body-kind seeks its
   endurance in another kind; the Intellectual-Principle, sustaining by
   its marvellous Being, the things which of themselves must fall, does
   not itself need to look for a staying ground.

   6. We take it, then, that the Intellectual-Principle is the authentic
   existences and contains them all -- not as in a place but as possessing
   itself and being one thing with this its content. All are one there and
   yet are distinct: similarly the mind holds many branches and items of
   knowledge simultaneously, yet none of them merged into any other, each
   acting its own part at call quite independently, every conception
   coming out from the inner total and working singly. It is after this
   way, though in a closer unity, that the Intellectual-Principle is all
   Being in one total -- and yet not in one, since each of these beings is
   a distinct power which, however, the total Intellectual-Principle
   includes as the species in a genus, as the parts in a whole. This
   relation may be illustrated by the powers in seed; all lies
   undistinguished in the unit, the formative ideas gathered as in one
   kernel; yet in that unit there is eye-principle, and there is
   hand-principle, each of which is revealed as a separate power by its
   distinct material product. Thus each of the powers in the seed is a
   Reason-Principle one and complete yet including all the parts over
   which it presides: there will be something bodily, the liquid, for
   example, carrying mere Matter; but the principle itself is Idea and
   nothing else, idea identical with the generative idea belonging to the
   lower soul, image of a higher. This power is sometimes designated as
   Nature in the seed-life; its origin is in the divine; and, outgoing
   from its priors as light from fire, it converts and shapes the matter
   of things, not by push and pull and the lever work of which we hear so
   much, but by bestowal of the Ideas.

   7. Knowledge in the reasoning soul is on the one side concerned with
   objects of sense, though indeed this can scarcely be called knowledge
   and is better indicated as opinion or surface-knowing; it is of later
   origin than the objects since it is a reflection from them: but on the
   other hand there is the knowledge handling the intellectual objects and
   this is the authentic knowledge; it enters the reasoning soul from the
   Intellectual-Principle and has no dealing with anything in sense. Being
   true knowledge it actually is everything of which it takes cognisance;
   it carries as its own content the intellectual act and the intellectual
   object since it carries the Intellectual-Principle which actually is
   the primals and is always self-present and is in its nature an Act,
   never by any want forced to seek, never acquiring or traversing the
   remote -- for all such experience belongs to soul -- but always
   self-gathered, the very Being of the collective total, not an extern
   creating things by the act of knowing them.

   Not by its thinking God does God come to be; not by its thinking
   Movement does Movement arise. Hence it is an error to call the Ideas
   intellections in the sense that, upon an intellectual act in this
   Principle, one such Idea or another is made to exist or exists. No: the
   object of this intellection must exist before the intellective act
   [must be the very content not the creation of the
   Intellectual-Principle]. How else could that Principle come to know it:
   certainly not [as an external] by luck or by haphazard search.

   8. If, then, the Intellection is an act upon the inner content [of a
   perfect unity], that content is at once the Idea [as object: eidos] and
   the Idea itself [as concept: idea].

   What, then, is that content?

   An Intellectual-Principle and an Intellective Essence, no concept
   distinguishable from the Intellectual-Principle, each actually being
   that Principle. The Intellectual-Principle entire is the total of the
   Ideas, and each of them is the [entire] Intellectual-Principle in a
   special form. Thus a science entire is the total of the relevant
   considerations each of which, again, is a member of the entire science,
   a member not distinct in space yet having its individual efficacy in a
   total.

   This Intellectual-Principle, therefore, is a unity while by that
   possession of itself it is, tranquilly, the eternal abundance.

   If the Intellectual-Principle were envisaged as preceding Being, it
   would at once become a principle whose expression, its intellectual
   Act, achieves and engenders the Beings: but, since we are compelled to
   think of existence as preceding that which knows it, we can but think
   that the Beings are the actual content of the knowing principle and
   that the very act, the intellection, is inherent to the Beings, as fire
   stands equipped from the beginning with fire-act; in this conception,
   the Beings contain the Intellectual-Principle as one and the same with
   themselves, as their own activity. Thus, Being is itself an activity:
   there is one activity, then, in both or, rather, both are one thing.

   Being, therefore, and the Intellectual-Principle are one Nature: the
   Beings, and the Act of that which is, and the Intellectual-Principle
   thus constituted, all are one: and the resultant Intellections are the
   Idea of Being and its shape and its act.

   It is our separating habit that sets the one order before the other:
   for there is a separating intellect, of another order than the true,
   distinct from the intellect, inseparable and unseparating, which is
   Being and the universe of things.

   9. What, then, is the content -- inevitably separated by our minds --
   of this one Intellectual-Principle? For there is no resource but to
   represent the items in accessible form just as we study the various
   articles constituting one science.

   This universe is a living thing capable of including every form of
   life; but its Being and its modes are derived from elsewhere; that
   source is traced back to the Intellectual-Principle: it follows that
   the all-embracing archetype is in the Intellectual-Principle, which,
   therefore, must be an intellectual Kosmos, that indicated by Plato in
   the phrase "The living existent."

   Given the Reason-Principle [the outgoing divine Idea] of a certain
   living thing and the Matter to harbour this seed-principle, the living
   thing must come into being: in the same way once there exists -- an
   intellective Nature, all powerful, and with nothing to check it --
   since nothing intervenes between it and that which is of a nature to
   receive it -- inevitably the higher imprints form and the lower
   accepts, it. The recipient holds the Idea in division, here man, there
   sun, while in the giver all remains in unity.

   10. All, then, that is present in the sense realm as Idea comes from
   the Supreme. But what is not present as Idea, does not. Thus of things
   conflicting with nature, none is There: the inartistic is not contained
   in the arts; lameness is not in the seed; for a lame leg is either
   inborn through some thwarting of the Reason-principle or is a marring
   of the achieved form by accident. To that Intellectual Kosmos belong
   qualities, accordant with Nature, and quantities; number and mass;
   origins and conditions; all actions and experiences not against nature;
   movement and repose, both the universals and the particulars: but There
   time is replaced by eternity and space by its intellectual equivalent,
   mutual inclusiveness.

   In that Intellectual Kosmos, where all is one total, every entity that
   can be singled out is an intellective essence and a participant in
   life: thus, identity and difference, movement and rest with the object
   resting or moving, essence and quality, all have essential existence.
   For every real being must be in actuality not merely in potentiality
   and therefore the nature of each essence is inherent in it.

   This suggests the question whether the Intellectual Kosmos contains the
   forms only of the things of sense or of other existents as well. But
   first we will consider how it stands with artistic creations: there is
   no question of an ideal archetype of evil: the evil of this world is
   begotten of need, privation, deficiency, and is a condition peculiar to
   Matter distressed and to what has come into likeness with Matter.

   11. Now as to the arts and crafts and their productions:

   The imitative arts -- painting, sculpture, dancing, pantomimic
   gesturing -- are, largely, earth-based; on an earthly base; they follow
   models found in sense, since they copy forms and movements and
   reproduce seen symmetries; they cannot therefore be referred to that
   higher sphere except indirectly, through the Reason-Principle in
   humanity.

   On the other hand any skill which, beginning with the observation of
   the symmetry of living things, grows to the symmetry of all life, will
   be a portion of the Power There which observes and meditates the
   symmetry reigning among all beings in the Intellectual Kosmos. Thus all
   music -- since its thought is upon melody and rhythm -- must be the
   earthly representation of the music there is in the rhythm of the Ideal
   Realm.

   The crafts, such as building and carpentry which give us Matter in
   wrought forms, may be said, in that they draw on pattern, to take their
   principles from that realm and from the thinking There: but in that
   they bring these down into contact with the sense-order, they are not
   wholly in the Intellectual: they are founded in man. So agriculture,
   dealing with material growths: so medicine watching over physical
   health; so the art which aims at corporeal strength and well-being:
   power and well-being mean something else There, the fearlessness and
   self-sufficing quality of all that lives.

   Oratory and generalship, administration and sovereignty -- under any
   forms in which their activities are associated with Good and when they
   look to that -- possess something derived thence and building up their
   knowledge from the knowledge There.

   Geometry, the science of the Intellectual entities, holds place There:
   so, too, philosophy, whose high concern is Being.

   For the arts and products of art, these observations may suffice.

   12. It should however be added that if the Idea of man exists in the
   Supreme, there must exist the Idea of reasoning man and of man with his
   arts and crafts; such arts as are the offspring of intellect Must be
   There.

   It must be observed that the Ideas will be of universals; not of
   Socrates but of Man: though as to man we may enquire whether the
   individual may not also have place There. Under the heading of
   individuality there is to be considered the repetition of the same
   feature from man to man, the simian type, for example, and the
   aquiline: the aquiline and the simian must be taken to be differences
   in the Idea of Man as there are different types of the animal: but
   Matter also has its effect in bringing about the degree of aquilinity.
   Similarly with difference of complexion, determined partly by the
   Reason-Principle, partly by Matter and by diversity of place.

   13. It remains to decide whether only what is known in sense exists
   There or whether, on the contrary, as Absolute-Man differs from
   individual man, so there is in the Supreme an Absolute-Soul differing
   from Soul and an Absolute-Intellect differing from
   Intellectual-Principle.

   It must be stated at the outset that we cannot take all that is here to
   be image of archetype, or Soul to be an image of Absolute-Soul: one
   soul, doubtless, ranks higher than another, but here too, though
   perhaps not as identified with this realm, is the Absolute-Soul.

   Every soul, authentically a soul, has some form of rightness and moral
   wisdom; in the souls within ourselves there is true knowing: and these
   attributes are no images or copies from the Supreme, as in the
   sense-world, but actually are those very originals in a mode peculiar
   to this sphere. For those Beings are not set apart in some defined
   place; wherever there is a soul that has risen from body, there too
   these are: the world of sense is one -- where, the Intellectual Kosmos
   is everywhere. Whatever the freed soul attains to here, that it is
   There.

   Thus, if by the content of the sense-world we mean simply the visible
   objects, then the Supreme contains not only what is in the realm of
   sense but more: if in the content of the kosmos we mean to include Soul
   and the Soul-things, then all is here that is There.

   14. There is, thus, a Nature comprehending in the Intellectual all that
   exists, and this Principle must be the source of all. But how, seeing
   that the veritable source must be a unity, simplex utterly?

   The mode by which from the unity arises the multiple, how all this
   universe comes to be, why the Intellectual-Principle is all and whence
   it springs, these matters demand another approach.

   But on the question as to whether the repulsive and the products of
   putridity have also their Idea -- whether there is an Idea of filth and
   mud -- it is to be observed that all that the Intellectual-Principle
   derived from The First is of the noblest; in those Ideas the base is
   not included: these repulsive things point not to the
   Intellectual-Principle but to the Soul which, drawing upon the
   Intellectual-Principle, takes from Matter certain other things, and
   among them these.

   But all this will be more clearly brought out, when we turn to the
   problem of the production of multiplicity from unity. Compounds, we
   shall see -- as owing existence to hazard and not to the
   Intellectual-Principle, having been fused into objects of sense by
   their own impulse -- are not to be included under Ideas.

   The products of putrefaction are to be traced to the Soul's inability
   to bring some other thing to being -- something in the order of nature,
   which, else, it would -- but producing where it may. In the matter of
   the arts and crafts, all that are to be traced to the needs of human
   nature are laid up in the Absolute Man.

   And before the particular Soul there is another Soul, a universal, and,
   before that, an Absolute-Soul, which is the Life existing in the
   Intellectual-Principle before Soul came to be and therefore rightly
   called [as the Life in the Divine] the Absolute-Soul.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE SIXTH ENNEAD
     __________________________________________________________________

  FIRST TRACTATE.

  ON THE KINDS OF BEING (1).

   1. Philosophy at a very early stage investigated the number and
   character of the Existents. Various theories resulted: some declared
   for one Existent, others for a finite number, others again for an
   infinite number, while as regards the nature of the Existents -- one,
   numerically finite, or numerically infinite -- there was a similar
   disagreement. These theories, in so far as they have been adequately
   examined by later workers, may be passed over here; our attention must
   be directed upon the results of those whose examination has led them to
   posit on their awn account certain well-defined genera.

   These thinkers rejected pure unity on the ground of the plurality
   observed even in the Intellectual world; they rejected an infinite
   number as not reconcilable with the facts and as defying knowledge:
   considering the foundations of being to be "genera" rather than
   elements strictly so called, they concluded for a finite number. Of
   these "genera" some found ten, others less, others no doubt more.

   But here again there is a divergence of views. To some the genera are
   first-principles; to others they indicate only a generic classification
   of the Existents themselves.

   Let us begin with the well-known tenfold division of the Existents, and
   consider whether we are to understand ten genera ranged under the
   common name of Being, or ten categories. That the term Being has not
   the same sense in all ten is rightly maintained.

   But a graver problem confronts us at the outset: Are the ten found
   alike in the Intellectual and in the Sensible realms? Or are all found
   in the Sensible and some only in the Intellectual? All in the
   Intellectual and some in the Sensible is manifestly impossible.

   At this point it would be natural to investigate which of the ten
   belong to both spheres, and whether the Existents of the Intellectual
   are to be ranged under one and the same genus with the Existents in the
   Sensible, or whether the term "Existence" [or Substance] is equivocal
   as applied to both realms. If the equivocation exists, the number of
   genera will be increased: if there is no equivocation, it is strange to
   find the one same "Existence" applying to the primary and to the
   derivative Existents when there is no common genus embracing both
   primal and secondary.

   These thinkers are however not considering the Intellectual realm in
   their division, which was not intended to cover all the Existents; the
   Supreme they overlooked.

   2. But are we really obliged to posit the existence of such genera?

   Take Substance, for Substance must certainly be our starting-point:
   what are the grounds for regarding Substance as one single genus?

   It has been remarked that Substance cannot be a single entity common to
   both the Intellectual and the Sensible worlds. We may add that such
   community would entail the existence of something prior to Intellectual
   and Sensible Substances alike, something distinct from both as
   predicated of both; and this prior would be neither body nor
   unembodied; for it were one or the other, body would be unembodied, or
   the unembodied would be the body.

   This conclusion must not however prevent our seeking in the actual
   substance of the Sensible world an element held in common by Matter, by
   Form and by their Composite, all of which are designated as substances,
   though it is not maintained that they are Substance in an equal degree;
   Form is usually held to be Substance in a higher degree than Matter,
   and rightly so, in spite of those who would have Matter to be the more
   truly real.

   There is further the distinction drawn between what are known as First
   and Second Substances. But what is their common basis, seeing that the
   First are the source from which the Second derive their right to be
   called substances?

   But, in sum, it is impossible to define Substance: determine its
   property, and still you have not attained to its essence. Even the
   definition, "That which, numerically one and the same, is receptive of
   contraries," will hardly be applicable to all substances alike.

   3. But perhaps we should rather speak of some single category,
   embracing Intellectual Substance, Matter, Form, and the Composite of
   Matter and Form. One might refer to the family of the Heraclids as a
   unity in the sense, not of a common element in all its members, but of
   a common origin: similarly, Intellectual Substance would be Substance
   in the first degree, the others being substances by derivation and in a
   lower degree.

   But what is the objection to including everything in a single category,
   all else of which existence is predicated being derived from that one
   thing, Existence or Substance? Because, granted that things be no more
   than modifications of Substance, there is a distinct grading of
   substances themselves. Moreover, the single category does not put us in
   a position to build on Substance, or to grasp it in its very truth as
   the plausible source of the other substances.

   Supposing we grant that all things known as substances are homogeneous
   as possessing something denied to the other genera, what precisely is
   this something, this individuality, this subject which is never a
   predicate, this thing not present in any thing as in a subject, this
   thing which does not owe its essential character to any other thing, as
   a quality takes character from a body and a quantity from a substance,
   as time is related to motion and motion to the moved?

   The Second Substance is, it is true, a predicate. But predication in
   this case signifies a different relation from that just considered; it
   reveals the genus inherent in the subject and the subject's essential
   character, whereas whiteness is predicated of a thing in the sense of
   being present in the thing.

   The properties adduced may indeed be allowed to distinguish Substance
   from the other Existents. They afford a means of grouping substances
   together and calling them by a common name. They do not however
   establish the unity of a genus, and they do not bring to light the
   concept and the nature of Substance.

   These considerations are sufficient for our purpose: let us now proceed
   to investigate the nature of Quantity.

   4. We are told that number is Quantity in the primary sense, number
   together with all continuous magnitude, space and time: these are the
   standards to which all else that is considered as Quantity is referred,
   including motion which is Quantity because its time is quantitative --
   though perhaps, conversely, the time takes its continuity from the
   motion.

   If it is maintained that the continuous is a Quantity by the fact of
   its continuity, then the discrete will not be a Quantity. If, on the
   contrary, the continuous possesses Quantity as an accident, what is
   there common to both continuous and discrete to make them quantities?

   Suppose we concede that numbers are quantities: we are merely allowing
   them the name of quantity; the principle which gives them this name
   remains obscure.

   On the other hand, line and surface and body are not called quantities;
   they are called magnitudes: they become known as quantities only when
   they are rated by number-two yards, three yards. Even the natural body
   becomes a quantity when measured, as does the space which it occupies;
   but this is quantity accidental, not quantity essential; what we seek
   to grasp is not accidental quantity but Quantity independent and
   essential, Quantity-Absolute. Three oxen is not a quantity; it is their
   number, the three, that is Quantity; for in three oxen we are dealing
   with two categories. So too with a line of a stated length, a surface
   of a given area; the area will be a quantity but not the surface, which
   only comes under that category when it constitutes a definite geometric
   figure.

   Are we then to consider numbers, and numbers only, as constituting the
   category of Quantity? If we mean numbers in themselves, they are
   substances, for the very good reason that they exist independently. If
   we mean numbers displayed in the objects participant in number, the
   numbers which give the count of the objects -- ten horses or ten oxen,
   and not ten units -- then we have a paradoxical result: first, the
   numbers in themselves, it would appear, are substances but the numbers
   in objects are not; and secondly, the numbers inhere in the objects as
   measures [of extension or weight], yet as standing outside the objects
   they have no measuring power, as do rulers and scales. If however their
   existence is independent, and they do not inhere in the objects, but
   are simply called in for the purpose of measurement, the objects will
   be quantities only to the extent of participating in Quantity.

   So with the numbers themselves: how can they constitute the category of
   Quantity? They are measures; but how do measures come to be quantities
   or Quantity? Doubtless in that, existing as they do among the Existents
   and not being adapted to any of the other categories, they find their
   place under the influence of verbal suggestion and so are referred to
   the so-called category of Quantity. We see the unit mark off one
   measurement and then proceed to another; and number thus reveals the
   amount of a thing, and the mind measures by availing itself of the
   total figure.

   It follows that in measuring it is not measuring essence; it pronounces
   its "one" or "two," whatever the character of the objects, even summing
   contraries. It does not take count of condition -- hot, handsome; it
   simply notes how many.

   Number then, whether regarded in itself or in the participant objects,
   belongs to the category of Quantity, but the participant objects do
   not. "Three yards long" does not fall under the category of Quantity,
   but only the three.

   Why then are magnitudes classed as quantities? Not because they are so
   in the strict sense, but because they approximate to Quantity, and
   because objects in which magnitudes inhere are themselves designated as
   quantities. We call a thing great or small from its participation in a
   high number or a low. True, greatness and smallness are not claimed to
   be quantities, but relations: but it is by their apparent possession of
   quantity that they are thought of as relations. All this, however,
   needs more careful examination.

   In sum, we hold that there is no single genus of Quantity. Only number
   is Quantity, the rest [magnitudes, space, time, motion] quantities only
   in a secondary degree. We have therefore not strictly one genus, but
   one category grouping the approximate with the primary and the
   secondary.

   We have however to enquire in what sense the abstract numbers are
   substances. Can it be that they are also in a manner quantitative? Into
   whatever category they fall, the other numbers [those inherent in
   objects] can have nothing in common with them but the name.

   5. Speech, time, motion -- in what sense are these quantities?

   Let us begin with speech. It is subject to measurement, but only in so
   far as it is sound; it is not a quantity in its essential nature, which
   nature is that it be significant, as noun and verb are significant. The
   air is its Matter, as it is Matter to verb and noun, the components of
   speech.

   To be more precise, we may define speech as an impact [made upon the
   outer air by the breath], though it is not so much the impact as the
   impression which the impact produces and which, as it were, imposes
   Form [upon the air]. Speech, thus, is rather an action than a quantity
   -- an action with a significance. Though perhaps it would be truer to
   say that while this motion, this impact, is an action, the
   counter-motion is an experience [or Passion]; or each may be from
   different points of view either an action or an experience: or we may
   think of speech as action upon a substrate [air] and experience within
   that substrate.

   If however voice is not characteristically impact, but is simply air,
   two categories will be involved: voice is significant, and the one
   category will not be sufficient to account for this significance
   without associating with a second.

   With regard to time, if it is to be thought of as a measure, we must
   determine what it is that applies this measure. It must clearly be
   either Soul or the Present Moment. If on the contrary we take time to
   be something measured and regard it as being of such and such extension
   -- a year, for example -- then we may consider it as a quantity:
   essentially however time is of a different nature; the very fact that
   we can attribute this or that length to it shows us that it is not
   length: in other words, time is not Quantity. Quantity in the strict
   sense is the Quantity not inbound with things; if things became
   quantities by mere participation in Quantity, then Substance itself
   would be identical with Quantity.

   Equality and inequality must be regarded as properties of
   Quantity-Absolute, not of the participants, or of them not essentially
   but only accidentally: such participants as "three yards' length,"
   which becomes a quantity, not as belonging to a single genus of
   Quantity, but by being subsumed under the one head, the one category.

   6. In considering Relation we must enquire whether it possesses the
   community of a genus, or whether it may on other grounds be treated as
   a unity.

   Above all, has Relation -- for example, that of right and left, double
   and half -- any actuality? Has it, perhaps, actuality in some cases
   only, as for instance in what is termed "posterior" but not in what is
   termed "prior"? Or is its actuality in no case conceivable?

   What meaning, then, are we to attach to double and half and all other
   cases of less and more; to habit and disposition, reclining, sitting,
   standing; to father, son, master, slave; to like, unlike, equal,
   unequal; to active and passive, measure and measured; or again to
   knowledge and sensation, as related respectively to the knowable and
   the sensible?

   Knowledge, indeed, may be supposed to entail in relation to the known
   object some actual entity corresponding to that object's Ideal Form,
   and similarly with sensation as related to the sense-object. The active
   will perform some constant function in relation to the passive, as will
   the measure in relation to the measured.

   But what will emerge from the relation of like to like? Nothing will
   emerge. Likeness is the inherence of qualitative identity; its entire
   content is the quality present in the two objects.

   From equality, similarly, nothing emerges. The relation merely
   presupposes the existence of a quantitative identity; -- is nothing but
   our judgement comparing objects essentially independent and concluding,
   "This and that have the same magnitude, the same quality; this has
   produced that; this is superior to that."

   Again, what meaning can sitting and standing have apart from sitter and
   stander? The term "habit" either implies a having, in which case it
   signifies possession, or else it arises from something had, and so
   denotes quality; and similarly with disposition.

   What then in these instances can be the meaning of correlatives apart
   from our conception of their juxtaposition? "Greater" may refer to very
   different magnitudes; "different" to all sorts of objects: the
   comparison is ours; it does not lie in the things themselves.

   Right and left, before and behind, would seem to belong less to the
   category of Relation than to that of Situation. Right means "situated
   at one point," left means "situated at another." But the right and left
   are in our conception, nothing of them in the things themselves.

   Before and after are merely two times; the relation is again of our
   making.

   7. Now if we do not mean anything by Relation but are victims of words,
   none of the relations mentioned can exist: Relation will be a notion
   void of content.

   Suppose however that we do possess ourselves of objective truth when in
   comparing two points of time we pronounce one prior, or posterior, to
   the other, that priority does entail something distinct from the
   objects to which it refers; admit an objective truth behind the
   relation of left and right: does this apply also to magnitudes, and is
   the relation exhibiting excess and deficiency also something distinct
   from the quantities involved?

   Now one thing is double of another quite apart from our speech or
   thought; one thing possesses and another is possessed before we notice
   the fact; equals do not await our comparison but -- and this applies to
   Quality as well as Quantity -- rest upon an identity existing between
   the objects compared: in all the conditions in which we assert Relation
   the mutual relation exists over and above the objects; we perceive it
   as already existent; our knowledge is directed upon a thing, there to
   be known -- a clear testimony to the reality of Relation.

   In these circumstances we can no longer put the question of its
   existence. We have simply to distinguish: sometimes the relation
   subsists while the objects remain unaltered and even apart; sometimes
   it depends upon their combination; sometimes, while they remain
   unchanged, the relation utterly ceases, or, as happens with right and
   near, becomes different. These are the facts which chiefly account for
   the notion that Relation has no reality in such circumstances.

   Our task, thus, is to give full value to this elusive character of
   Relation, and, then to enquire what there is that is constant in all
   these particular cases and whether this constant is generic or
   accidental; and having found this constant, we must discover what sort
   of actuality it possesses.

   It need hardly be said that we are not to affirm Relation where one
   thing is simply an attribute of another, as a habit is an attribute of
   a soul or of a body; it is not Relation when a soul belongs to this
   individual or dwells in that body. Relation enters only when the
   actuality of the relationships is derived from no other source than
   Relation itself; the actuality must be, not that which is
   characteristic of the substances in question, but that which is
   specifically called relative. Thus double with its correlative, half
   gives actuality neither to two yards' length or the number two, nor to
   one yard's length or the number one; what happens is that, when these
   quantities are viewed in their relation, they are found to be not
   merely two and one respectively, but to produce the assertion and to
   exhibit the fact of standing one to the other in the condition of
   double and half. Out of the objects in a certain conjunction this
   condition of being double and half has issued as something distinct
   from either; double and half have emerged as correlatives, and their
   being is precisely this of mutual dependence; the double exists by its
   superiority over the half, and the half by its inferiority; there is no
   priority to distinguish double from half; they arise simultaneously.

   It is another question whether they endure simultaneously. Take the
   case of father and son, and such relationships; the father dies, but
   the other is still his son, and so with brothers. Moreover, we see
   likeness where one of the like people is dead.

   8. But we are digressing: we must resume our enquiry into the cause of
   dissimilarity among relations. Yet we must first be informed what
   reality, common to all cases, is possessed by this Existence derived
   from mutual conditions.

   Now the common principle in question cannot be a body. The only
   alternative is that, if it does exist, it be something bodiless, either
   in the objects thus brought together or outside of them.

   Further, if Relation always takes the same form, the term is univocal
   [and specific differentiation is impossible]; if not, that is if it
   differs from case to case, the term is equivocal, and the same reality
   will not necessarily be implied by the mere use of the term Relation.

   How then shall we distinguish relations? We may observe that some
   things have an inactive or dormant relation, with which their actuality
   is entirely simultaneous; others, combining power and function with
   their relation, have the relation in some mode always even though the
   mode be merely that of potentiality, but attain to actual being only in
   contact with their correlatives. Or perhaps all distinctions may be
   reduced to that between producer and product, where the product merely
   gives a name to the producer of its actuality: an example of this is
   the relation of father to son, though here both producer and product
   have a sort of actuality, which we call life.

   Are we thus, then, to divide Relation, and thereby reject the notion of
   an identical common element in the different kinds of Relation, making
   it a universal rule that the relation takes a different character in
   either correlative? We must in this case recognise that in our
   distinction between productive and non-productive relations we are
   overlooking the equivocation involved in making the terms cover both
   action and passion, as though these two were one, and ignoring the fact
   that production takes a different form in the two correlatives. Take
   the case of equality, producing equals: nothing is equal without
   equality, nothing identical without identity. Greatness and smallness
   both entail a presence -- the presence of greatness and smallness
   respectively. When we come to greater and smaller, the participants in
   these relations are greater and smaller only when greatness and
   smallness are actually observed in them.

   9. It follows that in the cases specified above -- agent, knowledge and
   the rest -- the relation must be considered as in actual operation, and
   the Act and the Reason-Principle in the Act must be assumed to be real:
   in all other cases there will be simply participation in an Ideal-Form,
   in a Reason-Principle.

   If Reality implied embodiment, we should indeed be forced to deny
   Reality to these conditions called relative; if however we accord the
   pre-eminent place to the unembodied and to the Reason-Principles, and
   at the same time maintain that relations are Reason-Principles and
   participate in Ideal-Forms, we are bound to seek their causes in that
   higher sphere. Doubleness, it is clear, is the cause of a thing being
   double, and from it is derived halfness.

   Some correlatives owe their designations to the same Form, others to
   opposite Forms; it is thus that two objects are simultaneously double
   and half of each other, and one great and the other small. It may
   happen that both correlatives exist in one object-likeness and
   unlikeness, and, in general, identity and difference, so that the same
   thing will be at once like and unlike, identical and different.

   The question arises here whether sharing in the same Form could make
   one man depraved and another more depraved. In the case of total
   depravity, clearly the two are made equal by the absence of a Form.
   Where there is a difference of degree, the one has participated in a
   Form which has failed to predominate, the other in a Form which has
   failed still more: or, if we choose the negative aspect, we may think
   of them both as failing to participate in a Form which naturally
   belonged to them.

   Sensation may be regarded as a Form of double origin [determined both
   by the sense-organ and by the sensible object]; and similarly with
   knowledge.

   Habit is an Act directed upon something had [some experience produced
   by habit] and binding it as it were with the subject having
   [experiencing], as the Act of production binds producer and product.

   Measurement is an Act of the measurer upon the measured object: it too
   is therefore a kind of Reason-Principle.

   Now if the condition of being related is regarded as a Form having a
   generic unity, Relation must be allowed to be a single genus owing its
   reality to a Reason-Principle involved in all instances. If however the
   Reason-Principles [governing the correlatives] stand opposed and have
   the differences to which we have referred, there may perhaps not be a
   single genus, but this will not prevent all relatives being expressed
   in terms of a certain likeness and falling under a single category.

   But even if the cases of which we have spoken can be subsumed under a
   single head, it is nevertheless impossible to include in a single genus
   all that goes with them in the one common category: for the category
   includes negations and derivatives -- not only, for example, double but
   also its negative, the resultant doubleness and the act of doubling.
   But we cannot include in one genus both the thing and its negative --
   double and not-double, relative and not-relative -- any more than in
   dealing with the genus animal we can insert in it the nonanimal.
   Moreover, doubleness and doubling have only the relation to double that
   whiteness has to white; they cannot be classed as identical with it.

   10. As regards Quality, the source of what we call a "quale," we must
   in the first place consider what nature it possesses in accordance with
   which it produces the "qualia," and whether, remaining one and the same
   in virtue of that common ground, it has also differences whereby it
   produces the variety of species. If there is no common ground and the
   term Quality involves many connotations, there cannot be a single genus
   of Quality.

   What then will be the common ground in habit, disposition, passive
   quality, figure, shape? In light, thick and lean?

   If we hold this common ground to be a power adapting itself to the
   forms of habits, dispositions and physical capacities, a power which
   gives the possessor whatever capacities he has, we have no plausible
   explanation of incapacities. Besides, how are figure and the shape of a
   given thing to be regarded as a power?

   Moreover, at this, Being will have no power qua Being but only when
   Quality has been added to it; and the activities of those substances
   which are activities in the highest degree, will be traceable to
   Quality, although they are autonomous and owe their essential character
   to powers wholly their own!

   Perhaps, however, qualities are conditioned by powers which are
   posterior to the substances as such [and so do not interfere with their
   essential activities]. Boxing, for example, is not a power of man qua
   man; reasoning is: therefore reasoning, on this hypothesis, is not
   quality but a natural possession of the mature human being; it
   therefore is called a quality only by analogy. Thus, Quality is a power
   which adds the property of being qualia to substances already existent.

   The differences distinguishing substances from each other are called
   qualities only by analogy; they are, more strictly, Acts and
   Reason-Principles, or parts of Reason-Principles, and though they may
   appear merely to qualify the substance, they in fact indicate its
   essence.

   Qualities in the true sense -- those, that is, which determine qualia
   -- being in accordance with our definition powers, will in virtue of
   this common ground be a kind of Reason-Principle; they will also be in
   a sense Forms, that is, excellences and imperfections whether of soul
   or of body.

   But how can they all be powers? Beauty or health of soul or body, very
   well: but surely not ugliness, disease, weakness, incapacity. In a
   word, is powerlessness a power?

   It may be urged that these are qualities in so far as qualia are also
   named after them: but may not the qualia be so called by analogy, and
   not in the strict sense of the single principle? Not only may the term
   be understood in the four ways [of Aristotle], but each of the four may
   have at least a twofold significance.

   In the first place, Quality is not merely a question of action and
   passion, involving a simple distinction between the potentially active
   [quality] and the passive: health, disposition and habit, disease,
   strength and weakness are also classed as qualities. It follows that
   the common ground is not power, but something we have still to seek.

   Again, not all qualities can be regarded as Reason-Principles: chronic
   disease cannot be a Reason-Principle. Perhaps, however, we must speak
   in such cases of privations, restricting the term "Quantities" to
   Ideal-Forms and powers. Thus we shall have, not a single genus, but
   reference only to the unity of a category. Knowledge will be regarded
   as a Form and a power, ignorance as a privation and powerlessness.

   On the other hand, powerlessness and disease are a kind of Form;
   disease and vice have many powers though looking to evil.

   But how can a mere failure be a power? Doubtless the truth is that
   every quality performs its own function independently of a standard;
   for in no case could it produce an effect outside of its power.

   Even beauty would seem to have a power of its own. Does this apply to
   triangularity?

   Perhaps, after all, it is not a power we must consider, but a
   disposition. Thus, qualities will be determined by the forms and
   characteristics of the object qualified: their common element, then,
   will be Form and ideal type, imposed upon Substance and posterior to
   it.

   But then, how do we account for the powers? We may doubtless remark
   that even the natural boxer is so by being constituted in a particular
   way; similarly, with the man unable to box: to generalize, the quality
   is a characteristic non-essential. Whatever is seen to apply alike to
   Being and to non-Being, as do heat and whiteness and colours generally,
   is either different from Being -- is, for example, an Act of Being --
   or else is some secondary of Being, derived from it, contained in it,
   its image and likeness.

   But if Quality is determined by formation and characteristic and
   Reason-Principle, how explain the various cases of powerlessness and
   deformity? Doubtless we must think of Principles imperfectly present,
   as in the case of deformity. And disease -- how does that imply a
   Reason-Principle? Here, no doubt, we must think of a principle
   disturbed, the Principle of health.

   But it is not necessary that all qualities involve a Reason-Principle;
   it suffices that over and above the various kinds of disposition there
   exist a common element distinct from Substance, and it is what comes
   after the substance that constitutes Quality in an object.

   But triangularity is a quality of that in which it is present; it is
   however no longer triangularity as such, but the triangularity present
   in that definite object and modified in proportion to its success in
   shaping that object.

   11. But if these considerations are sound, why has Quality more than
   one species? What is the ground for distinguishing between habit and
   disposition, seeing that no differentia of Quality is involved in
   permanence and non-permanence? A disposition of any kind is sufficient
   to constitute a quality; permanence is a mere external addition. It
   might however be urged that dispositions are but incomplete "forms" --
   if the term may pass -- habits being complete ones. But incomplete,
   they are not qualities; if already qualities, the permanence is an
   external addition.

   How do physical powers form a distinct species? If they are classed as
   qualities in virtue of being powers, power, we have seen, is not a
   necessary concomitant of qualities. If, however, we hold that the
   natural boxer owes his quality to a particular disposition, power is
   something added and does not contribute to the quality, since power is
   found in habits also.

   Another point: why is natural ability to be distinguished from that
   acquired by learning? Surely, if both are qualities, they cannot be
   differentiae of Quality: gained by practice or given in nature, it is
   the same ability; the differentia will be external to Quality; it
   cannot be deduced from the Ideal Form of boxing. Whether some qualities
   as distinguished from others are derived from experience is immaterial;
   the source of the quality makes no difference -- none, I mean, pointing
   to variations and differences of Quality.

   A further question would seem to be involved: If certain qualities are
   derived from experience but here is a discrepancy in the manner and
   source of the experience, how are they to be included in the same
   species? And again, if some create the experience, others are created
   by it, the term Quality as applied to both classes will be equivocal.

   And what part is played by the individual form? If it constitutes the
   individual's specific character, it is not a quality; if, however, it
   is what makes an object beautiful or ugly after the specific form has
   been determined, then it involves a Reason-Principle.

   Rough and smooth, tenuous and dense may rightly be classed as
   qualities. It is true that they are not determined by distances and
   approximations, or in general by even or uneven dispositions, of parts;
   though, were they so determined, they might well even then be
   qualities.

   Knowledge of the meaning of "light" and "heavy" will reveal their place
   in the classification. An ambiguity will however be latent in the term
   "light," unless it be determined by comparative weight: it would then
   implicate leanness and fineness, and involve another species distinct
   from the four [of Aristotle].

   12. If then we do not propose to divide Quality in this [fourfold]
   manner, what basis of division have we?

   We must examine whether qualities may not prove to be divisible on the
   principle that some belong to the body and others to the soul. Those of
   the body would be subdivided according to the senses, some being
   attributed to sight, others to hearing and taste, others to smell and
   touch. Those of the soul would presumably be allotted to appetite,
   emotion, reason; though, again, they may be distinguished by the
   differences of the activities they condition, in so far as activities
   are engendered by these qualities; or according as they are beneficial
   or injurious, the benefits and injuries being duly classified. This
   last is applicable also to the classification of bodily qualities,
   which also produce differences of benefit and injury: these differences
   must be regarded as distinctively qualitative; for either the benefit
   and injury are held to be derived from Quality and the quale, or else
   some other explanation must be found for them.

   A point for consideration is how the quale, as conditioned by Quality,
   can belong to the same category: obviously there can be no single genus
   embracing both.

   Further, if "boxer" is in the category of Quality, why not "agent" as
   well? And with agent goes "active." Thus "active" need not go into the
   category of Relation; nor again need "passive," if "patient" is a
   quale. Moreover, agent" is perhaps better assigned to the category of
   Quality for the reason that the term implies power, and power is
   Quality. But if power as such were determined by Substance [and not by
   Quality], the agent, though ceasing to be a quale, would not
   necessarily become a relative. Besides, "active" is not like "greater":
   the greater, to be the greater, demands a less, whereas "active" stands
   complete by the mere possession of its specific character.

   It may however be urged that while the possession of that character
   makes it a quale, it is a relative in so far as it directs upon an
   external object the power indicated by its name. Why, then, is not
   "boxer" a relative, and "boxing" as well? Boxing is entirely related to
   an external object; its whole theory pre-supposes this external. And in
   the case of the other arts -- or most of them -- investigation would
   probably warrant the assertion that in so far as they affect the soul
   they are qualities, while in so far as they look outward they are
   active and as being directed to an external object are relatives. They
   are relatives in the other sense also that they are thought of as
   habits.

   Can it then be held that there is any distinct reality implied in
   activity, seeing that the active is something distinct only according
   as it is a quale? It may perhaps be held that the tendency towards
   action of living beings, and especially of those having freewill,
   implies a reality of activity [as well as a reality of Quality].

   But what is the function of the active in connection with those
   non-living powers which we have classed as qualities? Doubtless to
   recruit any object it encounters, making the object a participant in
   its content.

   But if one same object both acts and is acted upon, how do we then
   explain the active? Observe also that the greater -- in itself perhaps
   a fixed three yards' length -- will present itself as both greater and
   less according to its external contacts.

   It will be objected that greater and less are due to participation in
   greatness and smallness; and it might be inferred that a thing is
   active or passive by participation in activity or passivity.

   This is the place for enquiring also whether the qualities of the
   Sensible and Intellectual realms can be included under one head -- a
   question intended only for those who ascribe qualities to the higher
   realm as well as the lower. And even if Ideal Forms of qualities are
   not posited, yet once the term "habit" is used in reference to
   Intellect, the question arises whether there is anything common to that
   habit and the habit we know in the lower.

   Wisdom too is generally admitted to exist There. Obviously, if it
   shares only its name with our wisdom, it is not to be reckoned among
   things of this sphere; if, however, the import is in both cases the
   same, then Quality is common to both realms -- unless, of course, it be
   maintained that everything There, including even intellection, is
   Substance.

   This question, however, applies to all the categories: are the two
   spheres irreconcilable, or can they be co-ordinated with a unity?

   13. With regard to Date:

   If "yesterday," "to-morrow," "last year" and similar terms denote parts
   of time, why should they not be included in the same genus as time? It
   would seem only reasonable to range under time the past, present and
   future, which are its species. But time is referred to Quantity; what
   then is the need for a separate category of Date?

   If we are told that past and future -- including under past such
   definite dates as yesterday and last year which must clearly be
   subordinate to past time -- and even the present "now" are not merely
   time but time -- when, we reply, in the first place, that the notion of
   time -- when involves time; that, further, if "yesterday" is
   time-gone-by, it will be a composite, since time and gone-by are
   distinct notions: we have two categories instead of the single one
   required.

   But suppose that Date is defined not as time but as that which is in
   time; if by that which is in time is meant the subject -- Socrates in
   the proposition "Socrates existed last year" -- that subject is
   external to the notion of time, and we have again a duality.

   Consider, however, the proposition "Socrates -- or some action --
   exists at this time"; what can be the meaning here other than "in a
   part of time"? But if, admitted that Date is "a part of time," it be
   felt that the part requires definition and involves something more than
   mere time, that we must say the part of time gone by, several notions
   are massed in the proposition: we have the part which qua part is a
   relative; and we have "gone-by" which, if it is to have any import at
   all, must mean the past: but this "past," we have shown, is a species
   of time.

   It may be urged that "the past" is in its nature indefinite, while
   "yesterday" and "last year" are definite. We reply, first, that we
   demand some place in our classification for the past: secondly, that
   "yesterday," as definite past, is necessarily definite time. But
   definite time implies a certain quantity of time: therefore, if time is
   quantitative, each of the terms in question must signify a definite
   quantity.

   Again, if by "yesterday" we are expected to understand that this or
   that event has taken Place at a definite time gone by, we have more
   notions than ever. Besides, if we must introduce fresh categories
   because one thing acts in another -- as in this case something acts in
   time -- we have more again from its acting upon another in another.
   This point will be made plain by what follows in our discussion of
   Place.

   14. The Academy and the Lyceum are places, and parts of Place, just as
   "above," "below," "here" are species or parts of Place; the difference
   is of minuter delimitation.

   If then "above," "below," "the middle" are places -- Delphi, for
   example, is the middle [of the earth] -- and "near-the-middle" is also
   a place -- Athens, and of course the Lyceum and the other places
   usually cited, are near the middle -- what need have we to go further
   and seek beyond Place, admitting as we do that we refer in every
   instance to a place?

   If, however, we have in mind the presence of one thing in another, we
   are not speaking of a single entity, we are not expressing a single
   notion.

   Another consideration: when we say that a man is here, we present a
   relation of the man to that in which he is, a relation of the container
   to the contained. Why then do we not class as a relative whatever may
   be produced from this relation?

   Besides, how does "here" differ from "at Athens"? The demonstrative
   "here" admittedly signifies place; so, then, does "at Athens": "at
   Athens" therefore belongs to the category of Place.

   Again, if "at Athens" means "is at Athens," then the "is" as well as
   the place belongs to the predicate; but this cannot be right: we do not
   regard "is a quality" as predicate, but "a quality."

   Furthermore, if "in time," "in place" are to be ranged under a category
   other than that applying to time and place, why not a separate category
   for "in a vessel"? Why not distinct categories for "in Matter," "in a
   subject," "a part in a whole," "a whole in its parts," "a genus in its
   species," "a species in a genus"? We are certainly on the way to a
   goodly number of categories.

   15. The "category of Action":

   The quantum has been regarded as a single genus on the ground that
   Quantity and Number are attributes of Substance and posterior to it;
   the quale has been regarded as another genus because Quality is an
   attribute of Substance: on the same principle it is maintained that
   since activity is an attribute of Substance, Action constitutes yet
   another genus.

   Does then the action constitute the genus, or the activity from which
   the action springs, in the same way as Quality is the genus from which
   the quale is derived? Perhaps activity, action and agent should all be
   embraced under a single head? But, on the one hand, the action --
   unlike activity -- tends to comport the agent; and on the other, it
   signifies being in some activity and therefore Being-in-Act [actual as
   distinct from potential Being]. Consequently the category will be one
   of Act rather than of Action.

   Act moreover incontestably manifests itself in Substance, as was found
   to be the case with Quality: it is connected with Substance as being a
   form of motion. But Motion is a distinct genus: for, seeing that
   Quality is a distinct attribute of Substance, and Quality a distinct
   attribute, and Relative takes its being from the relation of one
   substance to another, there can be no reason why Motion, also an
   attribute of Substance, should not also constitute a distinct genus.

   16. If it be urged that Motion is but imperfect Act, there would be no
   objection to giving priority to Act and subordinating to it Motion with
   its imperfection as a species: Act would thus be predicated of Motion,
   but with the qualification "imperfect."

   Motion is thought of as imperfect, not because it is not an Act, but
   because, entirely an Act, it yet entails repetition [lacks finality].
   It repeats, not in order that it may achieve actuality -- it is already
   actual -- but that it may attain a goal distinct from itself and
   posterior: it is not the motion itself that is then consummated but the
   result at which it aims. Walking is walking from the outset; when one
   should traverse a racecourse but has not yet done so, the deficiency
   lies not in the walking -- not in the motion -- but in the amount of
   walking accomplished; no matter what the amount, it is walking and
   motion already: a moving man has motion and a cutter cuts before there
   is any question of Quantity. And just as we can speak of Act without
   implying time, so we can of Motion, except in the sense of motion over
   a defined area; Act is timeless, and so is Motion pure and simple.

   Are we told that Motion is necessarily in time, inasmuch as it involves
   continuity? But, at this, sight, never ceasing to see, will also be
   continuous and in time. Our critic, it is true, may find support in
   that principle of proportion which states that you may make a division
   of no matter what motion, and find that neither the motion nor its
   duration has any beginning but that the division may be continued
   indefinitely in the direction of the motion's origin: this would mean
   that a motion just begun has been in progress from an infinity of time,
   that it is infinite as regards its beginning.

   Such then is the result of separating Act from Motion: Act, we aver, is
   timeless; yet we are forced to maintain not only that time is necessary
   to quantitative motion, but, unreservedly, that Motion is quantitative
   in its very nature; though indeed, if it were a case of motion
   occupying a day or some other quantity of time, the exponents of this
   view would be the first to admit that Quantity is present to Motion
   only by way of accident.

   In sum, just as Act is timeless, so there is no reason why Motion also
   should not primarily be timeless, time attaching to it only in so far
   as it happens to have such and such an extension.

   Timeless change is sanctioned in the expression, "as if change could
   not take place all at once"; if then change is timeless, why not Motion
   also? -- Change, be it noted, is here distinguished from the result of
   change, the result being unnecessary to establish the change itself.

   17. We may be told that neither Act nor Motion requires a genus for
   itself, but that both revert to Relation, Act belonging to the
   potentially active, Motion to the potentially motive. Our reply is that
   Relation produces relatives as such, and not the mere reference to an
   external standard; given the existence of a thing, whether attributive
   or relative, it holds its essential character prior to any
   relationship: so then must Act and Motion, and even such an attribute
   as habit; they are not prevented from being prior to any relationship
   they may occupy, or from being conceivable in themselves. Otherwise,
   everything will be relative; for anything you think of -- even Soul --
   bears some relationship to something else.

   But, to return to activity proper and the action, is there any reason
   why these should be referred to Relation? They must in every instance
   be either Motion or Act.

   If however activity is referred to Relation and the action made a
   distinct genus, why is not Motion referred to Relation and the movement
   made a distinct genus? Why not bisect the unity, Motion, and so make
   Action and Passion two species of the one thing, ceasing to consider
   Action and Passion as two genera?

   18. There are other questions calling for consideration:

   First: Are both Acts and motions to be included in the category of
   Action, with the distinction that Acts are momentary while Motions,
   such as cutting, are in time? Or will both be regarded as motions or as
   involving Motion?

   Secondly: Will all activities be related to passivity, or will some --
   for example, walking and speaking -- be considered as independent of
   it?

   Thirdly: Will all those related to passivity be classed as motions and
   the independent as Acts, or will the two classes overlap? Walking, for
   instance, which is an independent, would, one supposes, be a motion;
   thinking, which also does not essentially involve "passivity," an Act:
   otherwise we must hold that thinking and walking are not even actions.
   But if they are not in the category of Action, where then in our
   classification must they fall?

   It may perhaps be urged that the act of thinking, together with the
   faculty of thought, should be regarded as relative to the thought
   object; for is not the faculty of sensation treated as relative to the
   sensible object? If then, we may ask, in the analogue the faculty of
   sensation is treated as relative to the sensible object, why not the
   sensory act as well? The fact is that even sensation, though related to
   an external object, has something besides that relation: it has,
   namely, its own status of being either an Act or a Passion. Now the
   Passion is separable from the condition of being attached to some
   object and caused by some object: so, then, is the Act a distinct
   entity. Walking is similarly attached and caused, and yet has besides
   the status of being a motion. It follows that thought, in addition to
   its relationship, will have the status of being either a motion or an
   Act.

   19. We have to ask ourselves whether there are not certain Acts which
   without the addition of a time-element will be thought of as imperfect
   and therefore classed with motions. Take for instance living and life.
   The life of a definite person implies a certain adequate period, just
   as his happiness is no merely instantaneous thing. Life and happiness
   are, in other words, of the nature ascribed to Motion: both therefore
   must be treated as motions, and Motion must be regarded as a unity, a
   single genus; besides the quantity and quality belonging to Substance
   we must take count of the motion manifested in it.

   We may further find desirable to distinguish bodily from psychic
   motions or spontaneous motions from those induced by external forces,
   or the original from the derivative, the original motions being
   activities, whether externally related or independent, while the
   derivative will be Passions.

   But surely the motions having external tendency are actually identical
   with those of external derivation: the cutting issuing from the cutter
   and that effected in the object are one, though to cut is not the same
   as to be cut.

   Perhaps however the cutting issuing from the cutter and that which
   takes place in the cut object are in fact not one, but "to cut" implies
   that from a particular Act and motion there results a different motion
   in the object cut. Or perhaps the difference [between Action and
   Passion] lies not in the fact of being cut, but in the distinct emotion
   supervening, pain for example: passivity has this connotation also.

   But when there is no pain, what occurs? Nothing, surely, but the Act of
   the agent upon the patient object: this is all that is meant in such
   cases by Action. Action, thus, becomes twofold: there is that which
   occurs in the external, and that which does not. The duality of Action
   and Passion, suggested by the notion that Action [always] takes place
   in an external, is abandoned.

   Even writing, though taking place upon an external object, does not
   call for passivity, since no effect is produced, upon the tablet beyond
   the Act of the writer, nothing like pain; we may be told that the
   tablet has been inscribed, but this does not suffice for passivity.

   Again, in the case of walking there is the earth trodden upon, but no
   one thinks of it as having experienced Passion [or suffering]. Treading
   on a living body, we think of suffering, because we reflect not upon
   the walking but upon the ensuing pain: otherwise we should think of
   suffering in the case of the tablet as well.

   It is so in every case of Action: we cannot but think of it as knit
   into a unity with its opposite, Passion. Not that this later "Passion"
   is the opposite of Action in the way in which being burned is the
   opposite of burning: by Passion in this sense we mean the effect
   supervening upon the combined facts of the burning and the being
   burned, whether this effect be pain or some such process as withering.

   Suppose this Passion to be treated as of itself producing pain: have we
   not still the duality of agent and patient, two results from the one
   Act? The Act may no longer include the will to cause pain; but it
   produces something distinct from itself, a pain-causing medium which
   enters into the object about to experience pain: this medium, while
   retaining its individuality, produces something yet different, the
   feeling of pain.

   What does this suggest? Surely that the very medium -- the act of
   hearing, for instance -- is, even before it produces pain or without
   producing pain at all, a Passion of that into which it enters.

   But hearing, with sensation in general, is in fact not a Passion. Yet
   to feel pain is to experience a Passion -- a Passion however which is
   not opposed to Action.

   20. But though not opposed, it is still different from Action and
   cannot belong to the same genus as activity; though if they are both
   Motion, it will so belong, on the principle that alteration must be
   regarded as qualitative motion.

   Does it follow that whenever alteration proceeds from Quality, it will
   be activity and Action, the quale remaining impassive? It may be that
   if the quale remains impassive, the alteration will be in the category
   of Action; whereas if, while its energy is directed outwards, it also
   suffers -- as in beating -- it will cease to belong to that category:
   or perhaps there is nothing to prevent its being in both categories at
   one and the same moment.

   If then an alteration be conditioned by Passivity alone, as is the case
   with rubbing, on what ground is it assigned to Action rather than to
   Passivity? Perhaps the Passivity arises from the fact that a
   counter-rubbing is involved. But are we, in view of this
   counter-motion, to recognize the presence of two distinct motions? No:
   one only.

   How then can this one motion be both Action and Passion? We must
   suppose it to be Action in proceeding from an object, and Passion in
   being directly upon another -- though it remains the same motion
   throughout.

   Suppose however Passion to be a different motion from Action: how then
   does its modification of the patient object change that patient's
   character without the agent being affected by the patient? For
   obviously an agent cannot be passive to the operation it performs upon
   another. Can it be that the fact of motion existing elsewhere creates
   the Passion, which was not Passion in the agent?

   If the whiteness of the swan, produced by its Reason-Principle, is
   given at its birth, are we to affirm Passion of the swan on its passing
   into being? If, on the contrary, the swan grows white after birth, and
   if there is a cause of that growth and the corresponding result, are we
   to say that the growth is a Passion? Or must we confine Passion to
   purely qualitative change?

   One thing confers beauty and another takes it: is that which takes
   beauty to be regarded as patient? If then the source of beauty -- tin,
   suppose -- should deteriorate or actually disappear, while the
   recipient -- copper -- improves, are we to think of the copper as
   passive and the tin active?

   Take the learner: how can he be regarded as passive, seeing that the
   Act of the agent passes into him [and becomes his Act]? How can the
   Act, necessarily a simple entity, be both Act and Passion? No doubt the
   Act is not in itself a Passion; nonetheless, the learner coming to
   possess it will be a patient by the fact of his appropriation of an
   experience from outside: he will not, of course, be a patient in the
   sense of having himself performed no Act; learning -- like seeing -- is
   not analogous to being struck, since it involves the acts of
   apprehension and recognition.

   21. How, then, are we to recognise Passivity, since clearly it is not
   to be found in the Act from outside which the recipient in turn makes
   his own? Surely we must look for it in cases where the patient remains
   without Act, the passivity pure.

   Imagine a case where an agent improves, though its Act tends towards
   deterioration. Or, say, a a man's activity is guided by evil and is
   allowed to dominate another's without restraint. In these cases the Act
   is clearly wrong, the Passion blameless.

   What then is the real distinction between Action and Passion? Is it
   that Action starts from within and is directed upon an outside object,
   while Passion is derived from without and fulfilled within? What, then,
   are we to say of such cases as thought and opinion which originate
   within but are not directed outwards? Again, the Passion "being heated"
   rises within the self, when that self is provoked by an opinion to
   reflection or to anger, without the intervention of any external. Still
   it remains true that Action, whether self-centred or with external
   tendency, is a motion rising in the self.

   How then do we explain desire and other forms of aspiration? Aspiration
   must be a motion having its origin in the object aspired to, though
   some might disallow "origin" and be content with saying that the motion
   aroused is subsequent to the object; in what respect, then, does
   aspiring differ from taking a blow or being borne down by a thrust?

   Perhaps, however, we should divide aspirations into two classes, those
   which follow intellect being described as Actions, the merely impulsive
   being Passions. Passivity now will not turn on origin, without or
   within -- within there can only be deficiency; but whenever a thing,
   without itself assisting in the process, undergoes an alteration not
   directed to the creation of Being but changing the thing for the worse
   or not for the better, such an alteration will be regarded as a Passion
   and as entailing passivity.

   If however "being heated" means "acquiring heat," and is sometimes
   found to contribute to the production of Being and sometimes not,
   passivity will be identical with impassivity: besides, "being heated"
   must then have a double significance [according as it does or does not
   contribute to Being].

   The fact is, however, that "being heated," even when it contributes to
   Being, involves the presence of a patient [distinct from the being
   produced]. Take the case of the bronze which has to be heated and so is
   a patient; the being is a statue, which is not heated except
   accidentally [by the accident of being contained in the bronze]. If
   then the bronze becomes more beautiful as a result of being heated and
   in the same proportion, it certainly becomes so by passivity; for
   passivity must, clearly, take two forms: there is the passivity which
   tends to alteration for better or for worse, and there is the passivity
   which has neither tendency.

   22. Passivity, thus, implies the existence within of a motion
   functioning somehow or other in the direction of alteration. Action too
   implies motion within, whether the motion be aimless or whether it be
   driven by the impulse comported by the term "Action" to find its goal
   in an external object. There is Motion in both Action and Passion, but
   the differentia distinguishing Action from Passion keeps Action
   impassive, while Passion is recognised by the fact that a new state
   replaces the old, though nothing is added to the essential character of
   the patient; whenever Being [essential Being] is produced, the patient
   remains distinct.

   Thus, what is Action in one relation may be Passion in another. One
   same motion will be Action from the point of view of A, Passion from
   that of B; for the two are so disposed that they might well be
   consigned to the category of Relation -- at any rate in the cases where
   the Action entails a corresponding Passion: neither correlative is
   found in isolation; each involves both Action and Passion, though A
   acts as mover and B is moved: each then involves two categories.

   Again, A gives motion to B, B receives it, so that we have a giving and
   a receiving -- in a word, a relation.

   But a recipient must possess what it has received. A thing is admitted
   to possess its natural colour: why not its motion also? Besides,
   independent motions such as walking and thought do, in fact, involve
   the possession of the powers respectively to walk and to think.

   We are reminded to enquire whether thought in the form of providence
   constitutes Action; to be subject to providence is apparently Passion,
   for such thought is directed to an external, the object of the
   providential arrangement. But it may well be that neither is the
   exercise of providence an action, even though the thought is concerned
   with an external, nor subjection to it a Passion. Thought itself need
   not be an action, for it does not go outward towards its object but
   remains self-gathered. It is not always an activity; all Acts need not
   be definable as activities, for they need not produce an effect;
   activity belongs to Act only accidentally.

   Does it follow that if a man as he walks produces footprints, he cannot
   be considered to have performed an action? Certainly as a result of his
   existing something distinct from himself has come into being. Yet
   perhaps we should regard both action and Act as merely accidental,
   because he did not aim at this result: it would be as we speak of
   Action even in things inanimate -- "fire heats," "the drug worked."

   So much for Action and Passion.

   23. As for Possession, if the term is used comprehensively, why are not
   all its modes to be brought under one category? Possession, thus, would
   include the quantum as possessing magnitude, the quale as possessing
   colour; it would include fatherhood and the complementary
   relationships, since the father possesses the son and the son possesses
   the father: in short, it would include all belongings.

   If, on the contrary, the category of Possession comprises only the
   things of the body, such as weapons and shoes, we first ask why this
   should be so, and why their possession produces a single category,
   while burning, cutting, burying or casting them out do not give another
   or others. If it is because these things are carried on the person,
   then one's mantle lying on a couch will come under a different category
   from that of the mantle covering the person. If the ownership of
   possession suffices, then clearly one must refer to the one category of
   Possession all objects identified by being possessed, every case in
   which possession can be established; the character of the possessed
   object will make no difference.

   If however Possession is not to be predicated of Quality because
   Quality stands recognised as a category, nor of Quantity because the
   category of Quantity has been received, nor of parts because they have
   been assigned to the category of Substance, why should we predicate
   Possession of weapons, when they too are comprised in the accepted
   category of Substance? Shoes and weapons are clearly substances.

   How, further, is "He possesses weapons," signifying as it does that the
   action of arming has been performed by a subject, to be regarded as an
   entirely simple notion, assignable to a single category?

   Again, is Possession to be restricted to an animate possessor, or does
   it hold good even of a statue as possessing the objects above
   mentioned? The animate and inanimate seem to possess in different ways,
   and the term is perhaps equivocal. Similarly, "standing" has not the
   same connotation as applied to the animate and the inanimate.

   Besides, how can it be reasonable for what is found only in a limited
   number of cases to form a distinct generic category?

   24. There remains Situation, which like Possession is confined to a few
   instances such as reclining and sitting.

   Even so, the term is not used without qualification: we say "they are
   placed in such and such a manner," "he is situated in such and such a
   position." The position is added from outside the genus.

   In short, Situation signifies "being in a place"; there are two things
   involved, the position and the place: why then must two categories be
   combined into one?

   Moreover, if sitting signifies an Act, it must be classed among Acts;
   if a Passion, it goes under the category to which belong Passions
   complete and incomplete.

   Reclining is surely nothing but "lying up," and tallies with "lying
   down" and "lying midway." But if the reclining belongs thus to the
   category of Relation, why not the recliner also? For as "on the right"
   belongs to the Relations, so does "the thing on the right"; and
   similarly with "the thing on the left."

   25. There are those who lay down four categories and make a fourfold
   division into Substrates, Qualities, States, and Relative States, and
   find in these a common Something, and so include everything in one
   genus.

   Against this theory there is much to be urged, but particularly against
   this posing of a common Something and a single all-embracing genus.
   This Something, it may be submitted, is unintelligible to themselves,
   is indefinable, and does not account either for bodies or for the
   bodiless. Moreover, no room is left for a differentia by which this
   Something may be distinguished. Besides, this common Something is
   either existent or non-existent: if existent, it must be one or other
   of its [four] species; -- if non-existent, the existent is classed
   under the non-existent. But the objections are countless; we must leave
   them for the present and consider the several heads of the division.

   To the first genus are assigned Substrates, including Matter, to which
   is given a priority over the others; so that what is ranked as the
   first principle comes under the same head with things which must be
   posterior to it since it is their principle.

   First, then: the prior is made homogeneous with the subsequent. Now
   this is impossible: in this relation the subsequent owes its existence
   to the prior, whereas among things belonging to one same genus each
   must have, essentially, the equality implied by the genus; for the very
   meaning of genus is to be predicated of the species in respect of their
   essential character. And that Matter is the basic source of all the
   rest of things, this school, we may suppose, would hardly deny.

   Secondly: since they treat the Substrate as one thing, they do not
   enumerate the Existents; they look instead for principles of the
   Existents. There is however a difference between speaking of the actual
   Existents and of their principles.

   If Matter is taken to be the only Existent, and all other things as
   modifications of Matter, it is not legitimate to set up a single genus
   to embrace both the Existent and the other things; consistency requires
   that Being [Substance] be distinguished from its modifications and that
   these modifications be duly classified.

   Even the distinction which this theory makes between Substrates and the
   rest of things is questionable. The Substrate is [necessarily] one
   thing and admits of no differentia -- except perhaps in so far as it is
   split up like one mass into its various parts; and yet not even so,
   since the notion of Being implies continuity: it would be better,
   therefore, to speak of the Substrate, in the singular.

   26. But the error in this theory is fundamental. To set Matter the
   potential above everything, instead of recognising the primacy of
   actuality, is in the highest degree perverse. If the potential holds
   the primacy among the Existents, its actualization becomes impossible;
   it certainly cannot bring itself into actuality: either the actual
   exists previously, and so the potential is not the first-principle, or,
   if the two are to be regarded as existing simultaneously, the
   first-principles must be attributed to hazard. Besides, if they are
   simultaneous, why is not actuality given the primacy? Why is the
   potential more truly real than the actual?

   Supposing however that the actual does come later than the potential,
   how must the theory proceed? Obviously Matter does not produce Form:
   the unqualified does not produce Quality, nor does actuality take its
   origin in the potential; for that would mean that the actual was
   inherent in the potential, which at once becomes a dual thing.

   Furthermore, God becomes a secondary to Matter, inasmuch as even he is
   regarded as a body composed of Matter and Form -- though how he
   acquires the Form is not revealed. If however he be admitted to exist
   apart from Matter in virtue of his character as a principle and a
   rational law [logos], God will be bodiless, the Creative Power
   bodiless. If we are told that he is without Matter but is composite in
   essence by the fact of being a body, this amounts to introducing
   another Matter, the Matter of God.

   Again, how can Matter be a first-principle, seeing that it is body?
   Body must necessarily be a plurality, since all bodies are composite of
   Matter and Quality. If however body in this case is to be understood in
   some different way, then Matter is identified with body only by an
   equivocation.

   If the possession of three dimensions is given as the characteristic of
   body, then we are dealing simply with mathematical body. If resistance
   is added, we are no longer considering a unity: besides, resistance is
   a quality or at least derived from Quality.

   And whence is this resistance supposed to come? Whence the three
   dimensions? What is the source of their existence? Matter is not
   comprised in the concept of the three-dimensional, nor the
   three-dimensional in the concept of Matter; if Matter partakes thus of
   extension, it can no longer be a simplex.

   Again, whence does Matter derive its unifying power? It is assuredly
   not the Absolute Unity, but has only that of participation in Unity.

   We inevitably conclude that Mass or Extension cannot be ranked as the
   first of things; Non-Extension and Unity must be prior. We must begin
   with the One and conclude with the Many, proceed to magnitude from that
   which is free from magnitude: a One is necessary to the existence of a
   Many, Non-Magnitude to that of Magnitude. Magnitude is a unity not by
   being Unity-Absolute, but by participation and in an accidental mode:
   there must be a primary and absolute preceding the accidental, or the
   accidental relation is left unexplained.

   The manner of this relation demands investigation. Had this been
   undertaken, the thinkers of this school would probably have lighted
   upon that Unity which is not accidental but essential and underived.

   27. On other grounds also, it is indefensible not to have reserved the
   high place for the true first-principle of things but to have set up in
   its stead the formless, passive and lifeless, the irrational, dark and
   indeterminate, and to have made this the source of Being. In this
   theory God is introduced merely for the sake of appearance: deriving
   existence from Matter he is a composite, a derivative, or, worse, a
   mere state of Matter.

   Another consideration is that, if Matter is a substrate, there must be
   something outside it, which, acting on it and distinct from it, makes
   it the substrate of what is poured into it. But if God is lodged in
   Matter and by being involved in Matter is himself no more than a
   substrate, he will no longer make Matter a substrate nor be himself a
   substrate in conjunction with Matter. For of what will they be
   substrates, when that which could make them substrates is eliminated?
   This so-called substrate turns out to have swallowed up all that is;
   but a substrate must be relative, and relative not to its content but
   to something which acts upon it as upon a datum.

   Again, the substrate comports a relation to that which is not
   substrate; hence, to something external to it: there must, then, be
   something apart from the substrate. If nothing distinct and external is
   considered necessary, but the substrate itself can become everything
   and adopt every character, like the versatile dancer in the pantomime,
   it ceases to be a substrate: it is, essentially, everything. The mime
   is not a substrate of the characters he puts on; these are in fact the
   realisation of his own personality: similarly, if the Matter with which
   this theory presents us comports in its own being all the realities, it
   is no longer the substrate of all: on the contrary, the other things
   can have no reality whatever, if they are no more than states of Matter
   in the sense that the poses of the mime are states through which he
   passes.

   Then, those other things not existing, Matter will not be a substrate,
   nor will it have a place among the Existents; it will be Matter bare,
   and for that reason not even Matter, since Matter is a relative. The
   relative is relative to something else: it must, further, be
   homogeneous with that something else: double is relative to half, but
   not Substance to double.

   How then can an Existent be relative to a Non-existent, except
   accidentally? But the True-Existent, or Matter, is related (to what
   emerges from it) as Existent to Non-Existent. For if potentiality is
   that which holds the promise of existence and that promise does not
   constitute Reality, the potentiality cannot be a Reality. In sum, these
   very teachers who deprecate the production of Realities from
   Nonrealities, themselves produce Non-reality from Reality; for to them
   the universe as such is not a Reality.

   But is it not a paradox that, while Matter, the Substrate, is to them
   an existence, bodies should not have more claim to existence, the
   universe yet more, and not merely a claim grounded on the reality of
   one of its parts?

   It is no less paradoxical that the living form should owe existence not
   to its soul but to its Matter only, the soul being but an affection of
   Matter and posterior to it. From what source then did Matter receive
   ensoulment? Whence, in short, is soul's entity derived? How does it
   occur that Matter sometimes turns into bodies, while another part of it
   turns into Soul? Even supposing that Form might come to it from
   elsewhere, that accession of Quality to Matter would account not for
   Soul, but simply for organized body soulless. If, on the contrary,
   there is something which both moulds Matter and produces Soul, then
   prior to the produced there must be Soul the producer.

   28. Many as are the objections to this theory, we pass on for fear of
   the ridicule we might incur by arguing against a position itself so
   manifestly ridiculous. We may be content with pointing out that it
   assigns the primacy to the Non-existent and treats it as the very
   summit of Existence: in short, it places the last thing first. The
   reason for this procedure lies in the acceptance of sense-perception as
   a trustworthy guide to first-principles and to all other entities.

   This philosophy began by identifying the Real with body; then, viewing
   with apprehension the transmutations of bodies, decided that Reality
   was that which is permanent beneath the superficial changes -- which is
   much as if one regarded space as having more title to Reality than the
   bodies within it, on the principle that space does not perish with
   them. They found a permanent in space, but it was a fault to take mere
   permanence as in itself a sufficient definition of the Real; the right
   method would have been to consider what properties must characterize
   Reality, by the presence of which properties it has also that of
   unfailing permanence. Thus if a shadow had permanence, accompanying an
   object through every change, that would not make it more real than the
   object itself. The sensible universe, as including the Substrate and a
   multitude of attributes, will thus have more claim to be Reality entire
   than has any one of its component entities (such as Matter): and if the
   sensible were in very truth the whole of Reality, Matter, the mere base
   and not the total, could not be that whole.

   Most surprising of all is that, while they make sense-perception their
   guarantee of everything, they hold that the Real cannot be grasped by
   sensation; -- for they have no right to assign to Matter even so much
   as resistance, since resistance is a quality. If however they profess
   to grasp Reality by Intellect, is it not a strange Intellect which
   ranks Matter above itself, giving Reality to Matter and not to itself?
   And as their "Intellect" has, thus, no Real-Existence, how can it be
   trustworthy when it speaks of things higher than itself, things to
   which it has no affinity whatever?

   But an adequate treatment of this entity [Matter] and of substrates
   will be found elsewhere.

   29. Qualities must be for this school distinct from Substrates. This in
   fact they acknowledge by counting them as the second category. If then
   they form a distinct category, they must be simplex; that is to say
   they are not composite; that is to say that as qualities, pure and
   simple, they are devoid of Matter: hence they are bodiless and active,
   since Matter is their substrate -- a relation of passivity.

   If however they hold Qualities to be composite, that is a strange
   classification which first contrasts simple and composite qualities,
   then proceeds to include them in one genus, and finally includes one of
   the two species [simple] in the other [composite]; it is like dividing
   knowledge into two species, the first comprising grammatical knowledge,
   the second made up of grammatical and other knowledge.

   Again, if they identify Qualities with qualifications of Matter, then
   in the first place even their Seminal Principles [Logoi] will be
   material and will not have to reside in Matter to produce a composite,
   but prior to the composite thus produced they will themselves be
   composed of Matter and Form: in other words, they will not be Forms or
   Principles. Further, if they maintain that the Seminal Principles are
   nothing but Matter in a certain state, they evidently identify
   Qualities with States, and should accordingly classify them in their
   fourth genus. If this is a state of some peculiar kind, what precisely
   is its differentia? Clearly the state by its association with Matter
   receives an accession of Reality: yet if that means that when divorced
   from Matter it is not a Reality, how can State be treated as a single
   genus or species? Certainly one genus cannot embrace the Existent and
   the Non-existent.

   And what is this state implanted in Matter? It is either real, or
   unreal: if real, absolutely bodiless: if unreal, it is introduced to no
   purpose; Matter is all there is; Quality therefore is nothing. The same
   is true of State, for that is even more unreal; the alleged Fourth
   Category more so.

   Matter then is the sole Reality. But how do we come to know this?
   Certainly not from Matter itself. How, then? From Intellect? But
   Intellect is merely a state of Matter, and even the "state" is an empty
   qualification. We are left after all with Matter alone competent to
   make these assertions, to fathom these problems. And if its assertions
   were intelligent, we must wonder how it thinks and performs the
   functions of Soul without possessing either Intellect or Soul. If,
   then, it were to make foolish assertions, affirming itself to be what
   it is not and cannot be, to what should we ascribe this folly?
   Doubtless to Matter, if it was in truth Matter that spoke. But Matter
   does not speak; anyone who says that it does proclaims the predominance
   of Matter in himself; he may have a soul, but he is utterly devoid of
   Intellect, and lives in ignorance of himself and of the faculty alone
   capable of uttering the truth in these things.

   30. With regard to States:

   It may seem strange that States should be set up as a third class -- or
   whatever class it is -- since all States are referable to Matter. We
   shall be told that there is a difference among States, and that a State
   as in Matter has definite characteristics distinguishing it from all
   other States and further that, whereas Qualities are States of Matter,
   States properly so-called belong to Qualities. But if Qualities are
   nothing but States of Matter, States [in the strict sense of the term]
   are ultimately reducible to Matter, and under Matter they must be
   classed.

   Further, how can States constitute a single genus, when there is such
   manifold diversity among them? How can we group together three yards
   long" and "white" -- Quantity and Quality respectively? Or again Time
   and Place? How can "yesterday," "last year," "in the Lyceum," "in the
   Academy," be States at all? How can Time be in any sense a State?
   Neither is Time a State nor the events in Time, neither the objects in
   Space nor Space itself.

   And how can Action be a State? One acting is not in a state of being
   but in a state of Action, or rather in Action simply: no state is
   involved. Similarly, what is predicated of the patient is not a state
   of being but a state of Passion, or strictly, Passion unqualified by
   state.

   But it would seem that State was the right category at least for cases
   of Situation and Possession: yet Possession does not imply possession
   of some particular state, but is Possession absolute.

   As for the Relative State, if the theory does not include it in the
   same genus as the other States, another question arises: we must
   enquire whether any actuality is attributed to this particular type of
   relation, for to many types actuality is denied.

   It is, moreover, absurd that an entity which depends upon the prior
   existence of other entities should be classed in the same genus with
   those priors: one and two must, clearly, exist, before half and double
   can.

   The various speculations on the subject of the Existents and the
   principles of the Existents, whether they have entailed an infinite or
   a finite number, bodily or bodiless, or even supposed the Composite to
   be the Authentic Existent, may well be considered separately with the
   help of the criticisms made by the ancients upon them.
     __________________________________________________________________

  SECOND TRACTATE.

  ON THE KINDS OF BEING (2).

   1. We have examined the proposed "ten genera": we have discussed also
   the theory which gathers the total of things into one genus and to this
   subordinates what may be thought of as its four species. The next step
   is, naturally, to expound our own views and to try to show the
   agreement of our conclusions with those of Plato.

   Now if we were obliged to consider Being as a unity, the following
   questions would be unnecessary:

   Is there one genus embracing everything, or are there genera which
   cannot be subsumed under such a unity? Are there first-principles? Are
   first-principles to be identified with genera, or genera with
   first-principles? Or is it perhaps rather the case that while not all
   genera are first-principles, all first-principles are at the same time
   genera? Or is the converse true? Or again, do both classes overlap,
   some principles being also genera, and some genera also principles? And
   do both the sets of categories we have been examining imply that only
   some principles are genera and some genera principles? or does one of
   them presuppose that all that belongs to the class of genera belongs
   also to the class of principles?

   Since, however, we affirm that Being is not a unity -- the reason for
   this affirmation is stated by Plato and others -- these questions
   become imperative, once we are satisfied as to the number of genera to
   be posited and the grounds for our choice.

   The subject of our enquiry, then, is the Existent or Existents, and it
   presents immediately two problems demanding separate analysis:

   What do we mean by the Existent? This is naturally the first question
   to be examined.

   What is that which, often taken for Being [for the Existent], is in our
   view Becoming and never really Being? Note however that these concepts
   are not to be taken as distinguished from each other in the sense of
   belonging to a genus, Something, divided into Being and Becoming; and
   we must not suppose that Plato took this view. It would be absurd to
   assign Being to the same genus as non-Being: this would be to make one
   genus of Socrates and his portrait. The division here [between what has
   Being and what is in Becoming] means a definite marking-off, a setting
   asunder, leading to the assertion that what takes the appearance of
   Being is not Being and implying that the nature of True Being has been
   quite misapprehended. Being, we are taught, must have the attribute of
   eternity, must be so constituted as never to belie its own nature.

   This, then, is the Being of which we shall treat, and in our
   investigation we shall assume that it is not a unity: subsequently we
   ask leave to say something on the nature of Becoming and on what it is
   that comes to be, that is, on the nature of the world of Sense.

   2. In asserting that Being is not a unity, we do not mean to imply a
   definite number of existences; the number may well be infinite: we mean
   simply that it is many as well as one, that it is, so to speak, a
   diversified unity, a plurality in unity.

   It follows that either the unity so regarded is a unity of genus under
   which the Existents, involving as they do plurality as well as unity,
   stand as species; or that while there are more genera than one, yet all
   are subordinate to a unity; or there may be more genera than one,
   though no one genus is subordinate to any other, but all with their own
   subordinates -- whether these be lesser genera, or species with
   individuals for their subordinates -- all are elements in one entity,
   and from their totality the Intellectual realm -- that which we know as
   Being -- derives its constitution.

   If this last is the truth, we have here not merely genera, but genera
   which are at the same time principles of Being. They are genera because
   they have subordinates -- other genera, and successively species and
   individuals; they are also principles, since from this plurality Being
   takes its rise, constituted in its entirety from these its elements.

   Suppose, however, a greater number of origins which by their mere
   totality comprised, without possessing any subordinates, the whole of
   Being; these would be first-principles but not genera: it would be as
   if one constructed the sensible world from the four elements -- fire
   and the others; these elements would be first principles, but they
   would not be genera, unless the term "genus" is to be used equivocally.

   But does this assertion of certain genera which are at the same time
   first-principles imply that by combining the genera, each with its
   subordinates, we find the whole of Being in the resultant combination?
   But then, taken separately, their existence will not be actual but only
   potential, and they will not be found in isolation.

   Suppose, on the other hand, we ignore the genera and combine the
   particulars: what then becomes of the ignored genera? They will,
   surely, exist in the purity of their own isolation, and the mixtures
   will not destroy them. The question of how this result is achieved may
   be postponed.

   For the moment we take it as agreed that there are genera as distinct
   from principles of Being and that, on another plane, principles
   [elements] are opposed to compounds. We are thus obliged to show in
   what relation we speak of genera and why we distinguish them instead of
   summing them under a unity; for otherwise we imply that their
   coalescence into a unity is fortuitous, whereas it would be more
   plausible to dispense with their separate existence.

   If all the genera could be species of Being, all individuals without
   exception being immediately subordinate to these species, then such a
   unification becomes feasible. But that supposition bespeaks
   annihilation for the genera: the species will no longer be species;
   plurality will no longer be subordinated to unity; everything must be
   the unity, unless there exist some thing or things outside the unity.
   The One never becomes many -- as the existence of species demands --
   unless there is something distinct from it: it cannot of itself assume
   plurality, unless we are to think of it as being broken into pieces
   like some extended body: but even so, the force which breaks it up must
   be distinct from it: if it is itself to effect the breaking up -- or
   whatever form the division may take -- then it is itself previously
   divided.

   For these and many other reasons we must abstain from positing a single
   genus, and especially because neither Being nor Substance can be the
   predicate of any given thing. If we do predicate Being, it is only as
   an accidental attribute; just as when we predicate whiteness of a
   substance, we are not predicating the Absolute Whiteness.

   3. We assert, then, a plurality of Existents, but a plurality not
   fortuitous and therefore a plurality deriving from a unity.

   But even admitting this derivation from a unity -- a unity however not
   predicated of them in respect of their essential being -- there is,
   surely, no reason why each of these Existents, distinct in character
   from every other, should not in itself stand as a separate genus.

   Is, then, this unity external to the genera thus produced, this unity
   which is their source though it cannot be predicated of them in respect
   of their essence? it is indeed external; the One is beyond; it cannot,
   therefore, be included among the genera: it is the [transcendent]
   source, while they stand side by side as genera. Yet surely the one
   must somehow be included [among the genera]? No: it is the Existents we
   are investigating, not that which is beyond Existence.

   We pass on, then, to consider that which is included, and find to our
   surprise the cause included with the things it causes: it is surely
   strange that causes and effects should be brought into the same genus.

   But if the cause is included with its effects only in the sense in
   which a genus is included with its subordinates, the subordinates being
   of a different order, so that it cannot be predicated of them whether
   as their genus or in any other relation, these subordinates are
   obviously themselves genera with subordinates of their own: you may,
   for example, be the cause of the operation of walking, but the walking
   is not subordinate to you in the relation of species to genus; and if
   walking had nothing prior to it as its genus, but had posteriors, then
   it would be a [primary] genus and rank among the Existents.

   Perhaps, however, it must be utterly denied that unity is even the
   cause of other things; they should be considered rather as its parts or
   elements -- if the terms may be allowed, -- their totality constituting
   a single entity which our thinking divides. All unity though it be, it
   goes by a wonderful power out into everything; it appears as many and
   becomes many when there is a motion; the fecundity of its nature causes
   the One to be no longer one, and we, displaying what we call its parts,
   consider them each as a unity and make them into "genera," unaware of
   our failure to see the whole at once. We display it, then, in parts,
   though, unable to restrain their natural tendency to coalesce, we bring
   these parts together again, resign them to the whole and allow them to
   become a unity, or rather to be a unity.

   All this will become clearer in the light of further consideration --
   when, that is to say, we have ascertained the number of the genera; for
   thus we shall also discover their causes. It is not enough to deny; we
   must advance by dint of thought and comprehension. The way is clear:

   4. If we had to ascertain the nature of body and the place it holds in
   the universe, surely we should take some sample of body, say stone, and
   examine into what constituents it may be divided. There would be what
   we think of as the substrate of stone, its quantity -- in this case, a
   magnitude; its quality -- for example, the colour of stone. As with
   stone, so with every other body: we should see that in this thing,
   body, there are three distinguishable characteristics -- the
   pseudo-substance, the quantity, the quality -- though they all make one
   and are only logically trisected, the three being found to constitute
   the unit thing, body. If motion were equally inherent in its
   constitution, we should include this as well, and the four would form a
   unity, the single body depending upon them all for its unity and
   characteristic nature.

   The same method must be applied in examining the Intellectual Substance
   and the genera and first-principles of the Intellectual sphere.

   But we must begin by subtracting what is peculiar to body, its
   coming-to-be, its sensible nature, its magnitude -- that is to say, the
   characteristics which produce isolation and mutual separation. It is an
   Intellectual Being we have to consider, an Authentic Existent,
   possessed of a unity surpassing that of any sensible thing.

   Now the wonder comes how a unity of this type can be many as well as
   one. In the case of body it was easy to concede unity-with-plurality;
   the one body is divisible to infinity; its colour is a different thing
   from its shape, since in fact they are separated. But if we take Soul,
   single, continuous, without extension, of the highest simplicity -- as
   the first effort of the mind makes manifest -- how can we expect to
   find multiplicity here too? We believed that the division of the living
   being into body and soul was final: body indeed was manifold,
   composite, diversified; but in soul we imagined we had found a simplex,
   and boldly made a halt, supposing that we had come to the limit of our
   course.

   Let us examine this soul, presented to us from the Intellectual realm
   as body from the Sensible. How is its unity a plurality? How is its
   plurality a unity? Clearly its unity is not that of a composite formed
   from diverse elements, but that of a single nature comprising a
   plurality.

   This problem attacked and solved, the truth about the genera comprised
   in Being will thereby, as we asserted, be elucidated also.

   5. A first point demanding consideration:

   Bodies -- those, for example, of animals and plants -- are each a
   multiplicity founded on colour and shape and magnitude, and on the
   forms and arrangement of parts: yet all these elements spring from a
   unity. Now this unity must be either Unity-Absolute or some unity less
   thorough-going and complete, but necessarily more complete than that
   which emerges, so to speak, from the body itself; this will be a unity
   having more claim to reality than the unity produced from it, for
   divergence from unity involves a corresponding divergence from Reality.
   Since, thus, bodies take their rise from unity, but not "unity" in the
   sense of the complete unity or Unity-Absolute -- for this could never
   yield discrete plurality -- it remains that they be derived from a
   unity Pluralized. But the creative principle [in bodies] is Soul: Soul
   therefore is a pluralized unity.

   We then ask whether the plurality here consists of the
   Reason-Principles of the things of process. Or is this unity not
   something different from the mere sum of these Principles? Certainly
   Soul itself is one Reason-Principle, the chief of the
   Reason-Principles, and these are its Act as it functions in accordance
   with its essential being; this essential being, on the other hand, is
   the potentiality of the Reason-Principles. This is the mode in which
   this unity is a plurality, its plurality being revealed by the effect
   it has upon the external.

   But, to leave the region of its effect, suppose we take it at the
   higher non-effecting part of Soul; is not plurality of powers to be
   found in this part also? The existence of this higher part will, we may
   presume, be at once conceded.

   But is this existence to be taken as identical with that of the stone?
   Surely not. Being in the case of the stone is not Being pure and
   simple, but stone-being: so here; Soul's being denotes not merely Being
   but Soul-being.

   Is then that "being" distinct from what else goes to complete the
   essence [or substance] of Soul? Is it to be identified with Bring [the
   Absolute], while to some differentia of Being is ascribed the
   production of Soul? No doubt Soul is in a sense Being, and this is not
   as a man "is" white, but from the fact of its being purely an essence:
   in other words, the being it possesses it holds from no source external
   to its own essence.

   6. But must it not draw on some source external to its essence, if it
   is to be conditioned, not only by Being, but by being an entity of a
   particular character? But if it is conditioned by a particular
   character, and this character is external to its essence, its essence
   does not comprise all that makes it Soul; its individuality will
   determine it; a part of Soul will be essence, but not Soul entire.

   Furthermore, what being will it have when we separate it from its other
   components? The being of a stone? No: the being must be a form of Being
   appropriate to a source, so to speak, and a first-principle, or rather
   must take the forms appropriate to all that is comprised in Soul's
   being: the being here must, that is, be life, and the life and the
   being must be one.

   One, in the sense of being one Reason-Principle? No; it is the
   substrate of Soul that is one, though one in such a way as to be also
   two or more -- as many as are the Primaries which constitute Soul.
   Either, then, it is life as well as Substance, or else it possesses
   life.

   But if life is a thing possessed, the essence of the possessor is not
   inextricably bound up with life. If, on the contrary, this is not
   possession, the two, life and Substance, must be a unity.

   Soul, then, is one and many -- as many as are manifested in that
   oneness -- one in its nature, many in those other things. A single
   Existent, it makes itself many by what we may call its motion: it is
   one entire, but by its striving, so to speak, to contemplate itself, it
   is a plurality; for we may imagine that it cannot bear to be a single
   Existent, when it has the power to be all that it in fact is. The cause
   of its appearing as many is this contemplation, and its purpose is the
   Act of the Intellect; if it were manifested as a bare unity, it could
   have no intellection, since in that simplicity it would already be
   identical with the object of its thought.

   7. What, then, are the several entities observable in this plurality?

   We have found Substance [Essence] and life simultaneously present in
   Soul. Now, this Substance is a common property of Soul, but life,
   common to all souls, differs in that it is a property of Intellect
   also.

   Having thus introduced Intellect and its life we make a single genus of
   what is common to all life, namely, Motion. Substance and the Motion,
   which constitutes the highest life, we must consider as two genera; for
   even though they form a unity, they are separable to thought which
   finds their unity not a unity; otherwise, it could not distinguish
   them.

   Observe also how in other things Motion or life is clearly separated
   from Being -- a separation impossible, doubtless, in True Being, but
   possible in its shadow and namesake. In the portrait of a man much is
   left out, and above all the essential thing, life: the "Being" of
   sensible things just such a shadow of True Being, an abstraction from
   that Being complete which was life in the Archetype; it is because of
   this incompleteness that we are able in the Sensible world to separate
   Being from life and life from Being.

   Being, then, containing many species, has but one genus. Motion,
   however, is to be classed as neither a subordinate nor a supplement of
   Being but as its concomitant; for we have not found Being serving as
   substrate to Motion. Motion is being Act; neither is separated from the
   other except in thought; the two natures are one; for Being is
   inevitably actual, not potential.

   No doubt we observe Motion and Being separately, Motion as contained in
   Being and Being as involved in Motion, and in the individual they may
   be mutually exclusive; but the dualism is an affirmation of our thought
   only, and that thought sees either form as a duality within a unity.

   Now Motion, thus manifested in conjunction with Being, does not alter
   Being's nature -- unless to complete its essential character -- and it
   does retain for ever its own peculiar nature: at once, then, we are
   forced to introduce Stability. To reject Stability would be more
   unreasonable than to reject Motion; for Stability is associated in our
   thought and conception with Being even more than with Motion;
   unalterable condition, unchanging mode, single Reason-Principle --
   these are characteristics of the higher sphere.

   Stability, then, may also be taken as a single genus. Obviously
   distinct from Motion and perhaps even its contrary, that it is also
   distinct from Being may be shown by many considerations. We may
   especially observe that if Stability were identical with Being, so also
   would Motion be, with equal right. Why identity in the case of
   Stability and not in that of Motion, when Motion is virtually the very
   life and Act both of Substance and of Absolute Being? However, on the
   very same principle on which we separated Motion from Being with the
   understanding that it is the same and not the same -- that they are two
   and yet one -- we also separate Stability from Being, holding it, yet,
   inseparable; it is only a logical separation entailing the inclusion
   among the Existents of this other genus. To identify Stability with
   Being, with no difference between them, and to identify Being with
   Motion, would be to identify Stability with Motion through the
   mediation of Being, and so to make Motion and Stability one and the
   same thing.

   8. We cannot indeed escape positing these three, Being, Motion,
   Stability, once it is the fact that the Intellect discerns them as
   separates; and if it thinks of them at all, it posits them by that very
   thinking; if they are thought, they exist. Things whose existence is
   bound up with Matter have no being in the Intellect: these three
   principles are however free of Matter; and in that which goes free of
   Matter to be thought is to be.

   We are in the presence of Intellect undefiled. Fix it firmly, but not
   with the eyes of the body. You are looking upon the hearth of Reality,
   within it a sleepless light: you see how it holds to itself, and how it
   puts apart things that were together, how it lives a life that endures
   and keeps a thought acting not upon any future but upon that which
   already is, upon an eternal present -- a thought self-centred, bearing
   on nothing outside of itself.

   Now in the Act of Intellect there are energy and motion; in its
   self-intellection Substance and Being. In virtue of its Being it
   thinks, and it thinks of itself as Being, and of that as Being, upon
   which it is, so to speak, pivoted. Not that its Act self-directed ranks
   as Substance, but Being stands as the goal and origin of that Act, the
   object of its contemplation though not the contemplation itself: and
   yet this Act too involves Being, which is its motive and its term. By
   the fact that its Being is actual and not merely potential, Intellect
   bridges the dualism [of agent and patient] and abjures separation: it
   identifies itself with Being and Being with itself.

   Being, the most firmly set of all things, that in virtue of which all
   other things receive Stability, possesses this Stability not as from
   without but as springing within, as inherent. Stability is the goal of
   intellection, a Stability which had no beginning, and the state from
   which intellection was impelled was Stability, though Stability gave it
   no impulsion; for Motion neither starts from Motion nor ends in Motion.
   Again, the Form-Idea has Stability, since it is the goal of Intellect:
   intellection is the Form's Motion.

   Thus all the Existents are one, at once Motion and Stability; Motion
   and Stability are genera all-pervading, and every subsequent is a
   particular being, a particular stability and a particular motion.

   We have caught the radiance of Being, and beheld it in its three
   manifestations: Being, revealed by the Being within ourselves; the
   Motion of Being, revealed by the motion within ourselves; and its
   Stability revealed by ours. We accommodate our being, motion, stability
   to those [of the Archetypal], unable however to draw any distinction
   but finding ourselves in the presence of entities inseparable and, as
   it were, interfused. We have, however, in a sense, set them a little
   apart, holding them down and viewing them in isolation; and thus we
   have observed Being, Stability, Motion -- these three, of which each is
   a unity to itself; in so doing, have we not regarded them as being
   different from each other? By this posing of three entities, each a
   unity, we have, surely, found Being to contain Difference.

   Again, inasmuch as we restore them to an all-embracing unity,
   identifying all with unity, do we not see in this amalgamation Identity
   emerging as a Real Existent?

   Thus, in addition to the other three [Being, Motion, Stability], we are
   obliged to posit the further two, Identity and Difference, so that we
   have in all five genera. In so doing, we shall not withhold Identity
   and Difference from the subsequents of the Intellectual order; the
   thing of Sense has, it is clear, a particular identity and a particular
   difference, but Identity and Difference have the generic status
   independently of the particular.

   They will, moreover, be primary genera, because nothing can be
   predicated of them as denoting their essential nature. Nothing, of
   course we mean, but Being; but this Being is not their genus, since
   they cannot be identified with any particular being as such. Similarly,
   Being will not stand as genus to Motion or Stability, for these also
   are not its species. Beings [or Existents] comprise not merely what are
   to be regarded as species of the genus Being, but also participants in
   Being. On the other hand, Being does not participate in the other four
   principles as its genera: they are not prior to Being; they do not even
   attain to its level.

   9. The above considerations -- to which others, doubtless, might be
   added -- suffice to show that these five are primary genera. But that
   they are the only primary genera, that there are no others, how can we
   be confident of this? Why do we not add unity to them? Quantity?
   Quality? Relation, and all else included by our various forerunners?

   As for unity: If the term is to mean a unity in which nothing else is
   present, neither Soul nor Intellect nor anything else, this can be
   predicated of nothing, and therefore cannot be a genus. If it denotes
   the unity present in Being, in which case we predicate Being of unity,
   this unity is not primal.

   Besides, unity, containing no differences, cannot produce species, and
   not producing species, cannot be a genus. You cannot so much as divide
   unity: to divide it would be to make it many. Unity, aspiring to be a
   genus, becomes a plurality and annuls itself.

   Again, you must add to it to divide it into species; for there can be
   no differentiae in unity as there are in Substance. The mind accepts
   differences of Being, but differences within unity there cannot be.
   Every differentia introduces a duality destroying the unity; for the
   addition of any one thing always does away with the previous quantity.

   It may be contended that the unity which is implicit in Being and in
   Motion is common to all other things, and that therefore Being and
   unity are inseparable. But we rejected the idea that Being is a genus
   comprising all things, on the ground that these things are not beings
   in the sense of the Absolute Being, but beings in another mode: in the
   same way, we assert, unity is not a genus, the Primary Unity having a
   character distinct from all other unities.

   Admitted that not everything suffices to produce a genus, it may yet be
   urged that there is an Absolute or Primary Unity corresponding to the
   other primaries. But if Being and unity are identified, then since
   Being has already been included among the genera, it is but a name that
   is introduced in unity: if, however, they are both unity, some
   principle is implied: if there is anything in addition [to this
   principle], unity is predicated of this added thing; if there is
   nothing added, the reference is again to that unity predicated of
   nothing. If however the unity referred to is that which accompanies
   Being, we have already decided that it is not unity in the primary
   sense.

   But is there any reason why this less complete unity should not still
   possess Primary Being, seeing that even its posterior we rank as Being,
   and "Being" in the sense of the Primary Being? The reason is that the
   prior of this Being cannot itself be Being -- or else, if the prior is
   Being, this is not Primary Being: but the prior is unity; [therefore
   unity is not Being].

   Furthermore, unity, abstracted from Being, has no differentiae.

   Again, even taking it as bound up with Being: If it is a consequent of
   Being, then it is a consequent of everything, and therefore the latest
   of things: but the genus takes priority. If it is simultaneous with
   Being, it is simultaneous with everything: but a genus is not thus
   simultaneous. If it is prior to Being, it is of the nature of a
   Principle, and therefore will belong only to Being; but if it serves as
   Principle to Being, it is not its genus: if it is not genus to Being,
   it is equally not a genus of anything else; for that would make Being a
   genus of all other things.

   In sum, the unity exhibited in Being on the one hand approximates to
   Unity-Absolute and on the other tends to identify itself with Being:
   Being is a unity in relation to the Absolute, is Being by virtue of its
   sequence upon that Absolute: it is indeed potentially a plurality, and
   yet it remains a unity and rejecting division refuses thereby to become
   a genus.

   10. In what sense is the particular manifestation of Being a unity?
   Clearly, in so far as it is one thing, it forfeits its unity; with
   "one" and "thing" we have already plurality. No species can be a unity
   in more than an equivocal sense: a species is a plurality, so that the
   "unity" here is that of an army or a chorus. The unity of the higher
   order does not belong to species; unity is, thus, ambiguous, not taking
   the same form in Being and in particular beings.

   It follows that unity is not a genus. For a genus is such that wherever
   it is affirmed its opposites cannot also be affirmed; anything of which
   unity and its opposites are alike affirmed -- and this implies the
   whole of Being -- cannot have unity as a genus. Consequently unity can
   be affirmed as a genus neither of the primary genera -- since the unity
   of Being is as much a plurality as a unity, and none of the other
   [primary] genera is a unity to the entire exclusion of plurality -- nor
   of things posterior to Being, for these most certainly are a plurality.
   In fact, no genus with all its items can be a unity; so that unity to
   become a genus must forfeit its unity. The unit is prior to number; yet
   number it must be, if it is to be a genus.

   Again, the unit is a unit from the point of view of number: if it is a
   unit generically, it will not be a unit in the strict sense.

   Again, just as the unit, appearing in numbers, not regarded as a genus
   predicated of them, but is thought of as inherent in them, so also
   unity, though present in Being, cannot stand as genus to Being or to
   the other genera or to anything whatever.

   Further, as the simplex must be the principle of the non-simplex,
   though not its genus -- for then the non-simplex too would be simplex,
   -- so it stands with unity; if unity is a Principle; it cannot be a
   genus to its subsequents, and therefore cannot be a genus of Being or
   of other things. If it is nevertheless to be a genus, everything of
   which it is a genus must be taken as a unit -- a notion which implies
   the separation of unity from substance: it will not, therefore, be
   all-embracing. just as Being is not a genus of everything but only of
   species each of which is a being, so too unity will be a genus of
   species each of which is a unity. But that raises the question of what
   difference there is between one thing and another in so far as they are
   both units, corresponding to the difference between one being and
   another.

   Unity, it may be suggested, is divided in its conjunction with Being
   and Substance; Being because it is so divided is considered a genus --
   the one genus manifested in many particulars; why then should not unity
   be similarly a genus, inasmuch as its manifestations are as many as
   those of Substance and it is divided into as many particulars?

   In the first place, the mere fact that an entity inheres in many things
   is not enough to make it a genus of those things or of anything else:
   in a word, a common property need not be a genus. The point inherent in
   a line is not a genus of lines, or a genus at all; nor again, as we
   have observed, is the unity latent in numbers a genus either of the
   numbers or of anything else: genus demands that the common property of
   diverse objects involve also differences arising out of its own
   character, that it form species, and that it belong to the essence of
   the objects. But what differences can there be in unity? What species
   does it engender? If it produces the same species as we find in
   connection with Being, it must be identical with Being: only the name
   will differ, and the term Being may well suffice.

   11. We are bound however to enquire under what mode unity is contained
   in Being. How is what is termed the "dividing" effected -- especially
   the dividing of the genera Being and unity? Is it the same division, or
   is it different in the two cases?

   First then: In what sense, precisely, is any given particular called
   and known to be a unity? Secondly: Does unity as used of Being carry
   the same connotation as in reference to the Absolute?

   Unity is not identical in all things; it has a different significance
   according as it is applied to the Sensible and the Intellectual realms
   -- Being too, of course, comports such a difference -- and there is a
   difference in the unity affirmed among sensible things as compared with
   each other; the unity is not the same in the cases of chorus, camp,
   ship, house; there is a difference again as between such discrete
   things and the continuous. Nevertheless, all are representations of the
   one exemplar, some quite remote, others more effective: the truer
   likeness is in the Intellectual; Soul is a unity, and still more is
   Intellect a unity and Being a unity.

   When we predicate Being of a particular, do we thereby predicate of it
   unity, and does the degree of its unity tally with that of its being?
   Such correspondence is accidental: unity is not proportionate to Being;
   less unity need not mean less Being. An army or a choir has no less
   Being than a house, though less unity.

   It would appear, then, that the unity of a particular is related not so
   much to Being as to a standard of perfection: in so far as the
   particular attains perfection, so far it is a unity; and the degree of
   unity depends on this attainment. The particular aspires not simply to
   Being, but to Being-in-perfection: it is in this strain towards their
   perfection that such beings as do not possess unity strive their utmost
   to achieve it.

   Things of nature tend by their very nature to coalesce with each other
   and also to unify each within itself; their movement is not away from
   but towards each other and inwards upon themselves. Souls, moreover,
   seem to desire always to pass into a unity over and above the unity of
   their own substance. Unity in fact confronts them on two sides: their
   origin and their goal alike are unity; from unity they have arisen, and
   towards unity they strive. Unity is thus identical with Goodness [is
   the universal standard of perfection]; for no being ever came into
   existence without possessing, from that very moment, an irresistible
   tendency towards unity.

   From natural things we turn to the artificial. Every art in all its
   operation aims at whatsoever unity its capacity and its models permit,
   though Being most achieves unity since it is closer at the start.

   That is why in speaking of other entities we assert the name only, for
   example man; when we say "one man," we have in mind more than one; and
   if we affirm unity of him in any other connection, we regard it as
   supplementary [to his essence]: but when we speak of Being as a whole
   we say it is one Being without presuming that it is anything but a
   unity; we thereby show its close association with Goodness.

   Thus for Being, as for the others, unity turns out to be, in some
   sense, Principle and Term, not however in the same sense as for things
   of the physical order -- a discrepancy leading us to infer that even in
   unity there are degrees of priority.

   How, then, do we characterize the unity [thus diverse] in Being? Are we
   to think of it as a common property seen alike in all its parts? In the
   first place, the point is common to lines and yet is not their genus,
   and this unity we are considering may also be common to numbers and not
   be their genus -- though, we need hardly say, the unity of
   Unity-Absolute is not that of the numbers, one, two and the rest.
   Secondly, in Being there is nothing to prevent the existence of prior
   and posterior, simple and composite: but unity, even if it be identical
   in all the manifestations of Being, having no differentiae can produce
   no species; but producing no species it cannot be a genus.

   12. Enough upon that side of the question. But how does the perfection
   [goodness] of numbers, lifeless things, depend upon their particular
   unity? Just as all other inanimates find their perfection in their
   unity.

   If it should be objected that numbers are simply non-existent, we
   should point out that our discussion is concerned [not with units as
   such, but] with beings considered from the aspect of their unity.

   We may again be asked how the point -- supposing its independent
   existence granted -- participates in perfection. If the point is chosen
   as an inanimate object, the question applies to all such objects: but
   perfection does exist in such things, for example in a circle: the
   perfection of the circle will be perfection for the point; it will
   aspire to this perfection and strive to attain it, as far as it can,
   through the circle.

   But how are the five genera to be regarded? Do they form particulars by
   being broken up into parts? No; the genus exists as a whole in each of
   the things whose genus it is.

   But how, at that, can it remain a unity? The unity of a genus must be
   considered as a whole-in-many.

   Does it exist then only in the things participating in it? No; it has
   an independent existence of its own as well. But this will, no doubt,
   become clearer as we proceed.

   13. We turn to ask why Quantity is not included among the primary
   genera, and Quality also.

   Quantity is not among the primaries, because these are permanently
   associated with Being. Motion is bound up with Actual Being
   [Being-in-Act], since it is its life; with Motion, Stability too gained
   its foothold in Reality; with these are associated Difference and
   Identity, so that they also are seen in conjunction with Being. But
   number [the basis of Quantity] is a posterior. It is posterior not only
   with regard to these genera but also within itself; in number the
   posterior is divided from the prior; this is a sequence in which the
   posteriors are latent in the priors [and do not appear simultaneously].
   Number therefore cannot be included among the primary genera; whether
   it constitutes a genus at all remains to be examined.

   Magnitude [extended quantity] is in a still higher degree posterior and
   composite, for it contains within itself number, line and surface. Now
   if continuous magnitude derives its quantity from number, and number is
   not a genus, how can magnitude hold that status? Besides, magnitudes,
   like numbers, admit of priority and posteriority.

   If, then, Quantity be constituted by a common element in both number
   and magnitude, we must ascertain the nature of this common element, and
   consider it, once discovered, as a posterior genus, not as one of the
   Primaries: thus failing of primary status, it must be related, directly
   or indirectly, to one of the Primaries.

   We may take it as clear that it is the nature of Quantity to indicate a
   certain quantum, and to measure the quantum of the particular; Quantity
   is moreover, in a sense, itself a quantum. But if the quantum is the
   common element in number and magnitude, either we have number as a
   primary with magnitude derived from it, or else number must consist of
   a blending of Motion and Stability, while magnitude will be a form of
   Motion or will originate in Motion, Motion going forth to infinity and
   Stability creating the unit by checking that advance.

   But the problem of the origin of number and magnitude, or rather of how
   they subsist and are conceived, must be held over. It may, thus, be
   found that number is among the primary genera, while magnitude is
   posterior and composite; or that number belongs to the genus Stability,
   while magnitude must be consigned to Motion. But we propose to discuss
   all this at a later stage.

   14. Why is Quality, again, not included among the Primaries? Because
   like Quantity it is a posterior, subsequent to Substance. Primary
   Substance must necessarily contain Quantity and Quality as its
   consequents; it cannot owe its subsistence to them, or require them for
   its completion: that would make it posterior to Quality and Quantity.

   Now in the case of composite substances -- those constituted from
   diverse elements -- number and qualities provide a means of
   differentiation: the qualities may be detached from the common core
   around which they are found to group themselves. But in the primary
   genera there is no distinction to be drawn between simples and
   composites; the difference is between simples and those entities which
   complete not a particular substance but Substance as such. A particular
   substance may very well receive completion from Quality, for though it
   already has Substance before the accession of Quality, its particular
   character is external to Substance. But in Substance itself all the
   elements are substantial.

   Nevertheless, we ventured to assert elsewhere that while the
   complements of Substance are only by analogy called qualities, yet
   accessions of external origin and subsequent to Substance are really
   qualities; that, further, the properties which inhere in substances are
   their activities [Acts], while those which are subsequent are merely
   modifications [or Passions]: we now affirm that the attributes of the
   particular substance are never complementary to Substance [as such]; an
   accession of Substance does not come to the substance of man qua man;
   he is, on the contrary, Substance in a higher degree before he arrives
   at differentiation, just as he is already "living being" before he
   passes into the rational species.

   15. How then do the four genera complete Substance without qualifying
   it or even particularizing it?

   It has been observed that Being is primary, and it is clear that none
   of the four -- Motion, Stability, Difference, Identity -- is distinct
   from it. That this Motion does not produce Quality is doubtless also
   clear, but a word or two will make it clearer still.

   If Motion is the Act of Substance, and Being and the Primaries in
   general are its Act, then Motion is not an accidental attribute: as the
   Act of what is necessarily actual [what necessarily involves Act], it
   is no longer to be considered as the complement of Substance but as
   Substance itself. For this reason, then, it has not been assigned to a
   posterior class, or referred to Quality, but has been made contemporary
   with Being.

   The truth is not that Being first is and then takes Motion, first is
   and then acquires Stability: neither Stability nor Motion is a mere
   modification of Being. Similarly, Identity and Difference are not later
   additions: Being did not grow into plurality; its very unity was a
   plurality; but plurality implies Difference, and unity-in-plurality
   involves Identity.

   Substance [Real Being] requires no more than these five constituents;
   but when we have to turn to the lower sphere, we find other principles
   giving rise no longer to Substance (as such) but to quantitative
   Substance and qualitative: these other principles may be regarded as
   genera but not primary genera.

   16. As for Relation, manifestly an offshoot, how can it be included
   among primaries? Relation is of thing ranged against thing; it is not
   self-pivoted, but looks outward.

   Place and Date are still more remote from Being. Place denotes the
   presence of one entity within another, so that it involves a duality;
   but a genus must be a unity, not a composite. Besides, Place does not
   exist in the higher sphere, and the present discussion is concerned
   with the realm of True Being.

   Whether time is There, remains to be considered. Apparently it has less
   claim than even Place. If it is a measurement, and that a measurement
   of Motion, we have two entities; the whole is a composite and posterior
   to Motion; therefore it is not on an equal footing with Motion in our
   classification.

   Action and Passivity presuppose Motion; if, then, they exist in the
   higher sphere, they each involve a duality; neither is a simplex.

   Possession is a duality, while Situation, as signifying one thing
   situated in another, is a threefold conception.

   17. Why are not beauty, goodness and the virtues, together with
   knowledge and intelligence, included among the primary genera?

   If by goodness we mean The First -- what we call the Principle of
   Goodness, the Principle of which we can predicate nothing, giving it
   this name only because we have no other means of indicating it -- then
   goodness, clearly, can be the genus of nothing: this principle is not
   affirmed of other things; if it were, each of these would be Goodness
   itself. The truth is that it is prior to Substance, not contained in
   it. If, on the contrary, we mean goodness as a quality, no quality can
   be ranked among the primaries.

   Does this imply that the nature of Being is not good? Not good, to
   begin with, in the sense in which The First is good, but in another
   sense of the word: moreover, Being does not possess its goodness as a
   quality but as a constituent.

   But the other genera too, we said, are constituents of Being, and are
   regarded as genera because each is a common property found in many
   things. If then goodness is similarly observed in every part of
   Substance or Being, or in most parts, why is goodness not a genus, and
   a primary genus? Because it is not found identical in all the parts of
   Being, but appears in degrees, first, second and subsequent, whether it
   be because one part is derived from another -- posterior from prior --
   or because all are posterior to the transcendent Unity, different parts
   of Being participating in it in diverse degrees corresponding to their
   characteristic natures.

   If however we must make goodness a genus as well [as a transcendent
   source], it will be a posterior genus, for goodness is posterior to
   Substance and posterior to what constitutes the generic notion of
   Being, however unfailingly it be found associated with Being; but the
   Primaries, we decided, belong to Being as such, and go to form
   Substance.

   This indeed is why we posit that which transcends Being, since Being
   and Substance cannot but be a plurality, necessarily comprising the
   genera enumerated and therefore forming a one-and-many.

   It is true that we do not hesitate to speak of the goodness inherent in
   Being" when we are thinking of that Act by which Being tends, of its
   nature, towards the One: thus, we affirm goodness of it in the sense
   that it is thereby moulded into the likeness of The Good. But if this
   "goodness inherent in Being" is an Act directed toward The Good, it is
   the life of Being: but this life is Motion, and Motion is already one
   of the genera.

   18. To pass to the consideration of beauty:

   If by beauty we mean the primary Beauty, the same or similar arguments
   will apply here as to goodness: and if the beauty in the Ideal-Form is,
   as it were, an effulgence [from that primary Beauty], we may observe
   that it is not identical in all participants and that an effulgence is
   necessarily a posterior.

   If we mean the beauty which identifies itself with Substance, this has
   been covered in our treatment of Substance.

   If, again, we mean beauty in relation to ourselves as spectators in
   whom it produces a certain experience, this Act [of production] is
   Motion -- and none the less Motion by being directed towards Absolute
   Beauty.

   Knowledge again, is Motion originating in the self; it is the
   observation of Being -- an Act, not a State: hence it too falls under
   Motion, or perhaps more suitably under Stability, or even under both;
   if under both, knowledge must be thought of as a complex, and if a
   complex, is posterior.

   Intelligence, since it connotes intelligent Being and comprises the
   total of existence, cannot be one of the genera: the true Intelligence
   [or Intellect] is Being taken with all its concomitants [with the other
   four genera]; it is actually the sum of all the Existents: Being on the
   contrary, stripped of its concomitants, may be counted as a genus and
   held to an element in Intelligence.

   Justice and self-control [sophrosyne], and virtue in general -- these
   are all various Acts of Intelligence: they are consequently not primary
   genera; they are posterior to a genus, that is to say, they are
   species.

   19. Having established our four primary genera, it remains for us to
   enquire whether each of them of itself alone produces species. And
   especially, can Being be divided independently, that is without drawing
   upon the other genera? Surely not: the differentiae must come from
   outside the genus differentiated: they must be differentiae of Being
   proper, but cannot be identical with it.

   Where then is it to find them? Obviously not in non-beings. If then in
   beings, and the three genera are all that is left, clearly it must find
   them in these, by conjunction and couplement with these, which will
   come into existence simultaneously with itself.

   But if all come into existence simultaneously, what else is produced
   but that amalgam of all Existents which we have just considered
   [Intellect]? How can other things exist over and above this
   all-including amalgam? And if all the constituents of this amalgam are
   genera, how do they produce species? How does Motion produce species of
   Motion? Similarly with Stability and the other genera.

   A word of warning must here be given against sinking the various genera
   in their species; and also against reducing the genus to a mere
   predicate, something merely seen in the species. The genus must exist
   at once in itself and in its species; it blends, but it must also be
   pure; in contributing along with other genera to form Substance, it
   must not destroy itself. There are problems here that demand
   investigation.

   But since we identified the amalgam of the Existents [or primary
   genera] with the particular intellect, Intellect as such being found
   identical with Being or Substance, and therefore prior to all the
   Existents, which may be regarded as its species or members, we may
   infer that the intellect, considered as completely unfolded, is a
   subsequent.

   Our treatment of this problem may serve to promote our investigation;
   we will take it as a kind of example, and with it embark upon our
   enquiry.

   20. We may thus distinguish two phases of Intellect, in one of which it
   may be taken as having no contact whatever with particulars and no Act
   upon anything; thus it is kept apart from being a particular intellect.
   In the same way science is prior to any of its constituent species, and
   the specific science is prior to any of its component parts: being none
   of its particulars, it is the potentiality of all; each particular, on
   the other hand, is actually itself, but potentially the sum of all the
   particulars: and as with the specific science, so with science as a
   whole. The specific sciences lie in potentiality in science the total;
   even in their specific character they are potentially the whole; they
   have the whole predicated of them and not merely a part of the whole.
   At the same time, science must exist as a thing in itself, unharmed by
   its divisions.

   So with Intellect. Intellect as a whole must be thought of as prior to
   the intellects actualized as individuals; but when we come to the
   particular intellects, we find that what subsists in the particulars
   must be maintained from the totality. The Intellect subsisting in the
   totality is a provider for the particular intellects, is the
   potentiality of them: it involves them as members of its universality,
   while they in turn involve the universal Intellect in their
   particularity, just as the particular science involves science the
   total.

   The great Intellect, we maintain, exists in itself and the particular
   intellects in themselves; yet the particulars are embraced in the
   whole, and the whole in the particulars. The particular intellects
   exist by themselves and in another, the universal by itself and in
   those. All the particulars exist potentially in that self-existent
   universal, which actually is the totality, potentially each isolated
   member: on the other hand, each particular is actually what it is [its
   individual self], potentially the totality. In so far as what is
   predicated of them is their essence, they are actually what is
   predicated of them; but where the predicate is a genus, they are that
   only potentially. On the other hand, the universal in so far as it is a
   genus is the potentiality of all its subordinate species, though none
   of them in actuality; all are latent in it, but because its essential
   nature exists in actuality before the existence of the species, it does
   not submit to be itself particularized. If then the particulars are to
   exist in actuality -- to exist, for example, as species -- the cause
   must lie in the Act radiating from the universal.

   21. How then does the universal Intellect produce the particulars
   while, in virtue of its Reason-Principle, remaining a unity? In other
   words, how do the various grades of Being, as we call them, arise from
   the four primaries? Here is this great, this infinite Intellect, not
   given to idle utterance but to sheer intellection, all-embracing,
   integral, no part, no individual: how, we ask, can it possibly be the
   source of all this plurality? Number at all events it possesses in the
   objects of its contemplation: it is thus one and many, and the many are
   powers, wonderful powers, not weak but, being pure, supremely great
   and, so to speak, full to overflowing powers in very truth, knowing no
   limit, so that they are infinite, infinity, Magnitude-Absolute.

   As we survey this Magnitude with the beauty of Being within it and the
   glory and light around it, all contained in Intellect, we see,
   simultaneously, Quality already in bloom, and along with the continuity
   of its Act we catch a glimpse of Magnitude at Rest. Then, with one, two
   and three in Intellect, Magnitude appears as of three dimensions, with
   Quantity entire. Quantity thus given and Quality, both merging into one
   and, we may almost say, becoming one, there is at once shape.
   Difference slips in to divide both Quantity and Quality, and so we have
   variations in shape and differences of Quality. Identity, coming in
   with Difference, creates equality, Difference meanwhile introducing
   into Quantity inequality, whether in number or in magnitude: thus are
   produced circles and squares, and irregular figures, with number like
   and unlike, odd and even.

   The life of Intellect is intelligent, and its activity [Act] has no
   failing-point: hence it excludes none of the constituents we have
   discovered within it, each one of which we now see as an intellectual
   function, and all of them possessed by virtue of its distinctive power
   and in the mode appropriate to Intellect.

   But though Intellect possesses them all by way of thought, this is not
   discursive thought: nothing it lacks that is capable of serving as
   Reason-Principle, while it may itself be regarded as one great and
   perfect Reason-Principle, holding all the Principles as one and
   proceeding from its own Primaries, or rather having eternally
   proceeded, so that "proceeding" is never true of it. It is a universal
   rule that whatever reasoning discovers to exist in Nature is to be
   found in Intellect apart from all ratiocination: we conclude that Being
   has so created Intellect that its reasoning is after a mode similar to
   that of the Principles which produce living beings; for the
   Reason-Principles, prior to reasoning though they are, act invariably
   in the manner which the most careful reasoning would adopt in order to
   attain the best results.

   What conditions, then, are we to think of as existing in that realm
   which is prior to Nature and transcends the Principles of Nature? In a
   sphere in which Substance is not distinct from Intellect, and neither
   Being nor Intellect is of alien origin, it is obvious that Being is
   best served by the domination of Intellect, so that Being is what
   Intellect wills and is: thus alone can it be authentic and primary
   Being; for if Being is to be in any sense derived, its derivation must
   be from Intellect.

   Being, thus, exhibits every shape and every quality; it is not seen as
   a thing determined by some one particular quality; there could not be
   one only, since the principle of Difference is there; and since
   Identity is equally there, it must be simultaneously one and many. And
   so Being is; such it always was: unity-with-plurality appears in all
   its species, as witness all the variations of magnitude, shape and
   quality. Clearly nothing may legitimately be excluded [from Being], for
   the whole must be complete in the higher sphere which, otherwise, would
   not be the whole.

   Life, too, burst upon Being, or rather was inseparably bound up with
   it; and thus it was that all living things of necessity came to be.
   Body too was there, since Matter and Quality were present.

   Everything exists forever, unfailing, involved by very existence in
   eternity. Individuals have their separate entities, but are at one in
   the [total] unity. The complex, so to speak, of them all, thus
   combined, is Intellect; and Intellect, holding all existence within
   itself, is a complete living being, and the essential Idea of Living
   Being. In so far as Intellect submits to contemplation by its
   derivative, becoming an Intelligible, it gives that derivative the
   right also to be called "living being."

   22. We may here adduce the pregnant words of Plato: "Inasmuch as
   Intellect perceives the variety and plurality of the Forms present in
   the complete Living Being...." The words apply equally to Soul; Soul is
   subsequent to Intellect, yet by its very nature it involves Intellect
   in itself and perceives more clearly in that prior. There is Intellect
   in our intellect also, which again perceives more clearly in its prior,
   for while of itself it merely perceives, in the prior it also perceives
   its own perception.

   This intellect, then, to which we ascribe perception, though not
   divorced from the prior in which it originates, evolves plurality out
   of unity and has bound up with it the principle of Difference: it
   therefore takes the form of a plurality-in-unity. A plurality-in-unity,
   it produces the many intellects by the dictate of its very nature.

   It is certainly no numerical unity, no individual thing; for whatever
   you find in that sphere is a species, since it is divorced from Matter.
   This may be the import of the difficult words of Plato, that Substance
   is broken up into an infinity of parts. So long as the division
   proceeds from genus to species, infinity is not reached; a limit is set
   by the species generated: the lowest species, however -- that which is
   not divided into further species -- may be more accurately regarded as
   infinite. And this is the meaning of the words: "to relegate them once
   and for all to infinity and there abandon them." As for particulars,
   they are, considered in themselves, infinite, but come under number by
   being embraced by the [total] unity.

   Now Soul has Intellect for its prior, is therefore circumscribed by
   number down to its ultimate extremity; at that point infinity is
   reached. The particular intellect, though all-embracing, is a partial
   thing, and the collective Intellect and its various manifestations [all
   the particular intellects] are in actuality parts of that part. Soul
   too is a part of a part, though in the sense of being an Act
   [actuality] derived from it. When the Act of Intellect is directed upon
   itself, the result is the manifold [particular] intellects; when it
   looks outwards, Soul is produced.

   If Soul acts as a genus or a species, the various [particular] souls
   must act as species. Their activities [Acts] will be twofold: the
   activity upward is Intellect; that which looks downward constitutes the
   other powers imposed by the particular Reason-Principle [the
   Reason-Principle of the being ensouled]; the lowest activity of Soul is
   in its contact with Matter to which it brings Form.

   This lower part of Soul does not prevent the rest from being entirely
   in the higher sphere: indeed what we call the lower part is but an
   image of Soul: not that it is cut off from Soul; it is like the
   reflection in the mirror, depending upon the original which stands
   outside of it.

   But we must keep in mind what this "outside" means. Up to the
   production of the image, the Intellectual realm is wholly and
   exclusively composed of Intellectual Beings: in the same way the
   Sensible world, representing that in so far as it is able to retain the
   likeness of a living being, is itself a living being: the relation is
   like that of a portrait or reflection to the original which is regarded
   as prior to the water or the painting reproducing it.

   The representation, notice, in the portrait or on the water is not of
   the dual being, but of the one element [Matter] as formed by the other
   [Soul]. Similarly, this likeness of the Intellectual realm carries
   images, not of the creative element, but of the entities contained in
   that creator, including Man with every other living being: creator and
   created are alike living beings, though of a different life, and both
   coexist in the Intellectual realm.
     __________________________________________________________________

  THIRD TRACTATE.

  ON THE KINDS OF BEING (3).

   1. We have now explained our conception of Reality [True Being] and
   considered how far it agrees with the teaching of Plato. We have still
   to investigate the opposed principle [the principle of Becoming].

   There is the possibility that the genera posited for the Intellectual
   sphere will suffice for the lower also; possibly with these genera
   others will be required; again, the two series may differ entirely; or
   perhaps some of the sensible genera will be identical with their
   intellectual prototypes, and others different -- "identical," however,
   being understood to mean only analogous and in possession of a common
   name, as our results will make dear.

   We must begin on these lines:

   The subject of our discussion is the Sensible realm: Sensible Existence
   is entirely embraced by what we know as the Universe: our duty, then,
   would seem to be clear enough -- to take this Universe and analyse its
   nature, classifying its constituent parts and arranging them by
   species. Suppose that we were making a division of speech: we should
   reduce its infinity to finite terms, and from the identity appearing in
   many instances evolve a unity, then another and another, until we
   arrived at some definite number; each such unit we should call a
   species if imposed upon individuals, a genus if imposed upon species.
   Thus, every species of speech -- and similarly all phenomena -- might
   be referred to a unity; speech -- or element -- might be predicated of
   them all.

   This procedure however is as we have already shown, impossible in
   dealing with the subject of our present enquiry. New genera must be
   sought for this Universe-genera distinct from those of the
   Intellectual, inasmuch as this realm is different from that, analogous
   indeed but never identical, a mere image of the higher. True, it
   involves the parallel existence of Body and Soul, for the Universe is a
   living form: essentially however Soul is of the Intellectual and does
   not enter into the structure of what is called Sensible Being.

   Remembering this fact, we must -- however great the difficulty --
   exclude Soul from the present investigation, just as in a census of
   citizens, taken in the interests of commerce and taxation, we should
   ignore the alien population. As for the experiences to which Soul is
   indirectly subject in its conjunction with Body and by reason of Body's
   presence, their classification must be attempted at a later stage, when
   we enquire into the details of Sensible Existence.

   2. Our first observations must be directed to what passes in the
   Sensible realm for Substance. It is, we shall agree, only by analogy
   that the nature manifested in bodies is designated as Substance, and by
   no means because such terms as Substance or Being tally with the notion
   of bodies in flux; the proper term would be Becoming.

   But Becoming is not a uniform nature; bodies comprise under the single
   head simples and composites, together with accidentals or consequents,
   these last themselves capable of separate classification.

   Alternatively, Becoming may be divided into Matter and the Form imposed
   upon Matter. These may be regarded each as a separate genus, or else
   both may be brought under a single category and receive alike the name
   of Substance.

   But what, we may ask, have Matter and Form in common? In what sense can
   Matter be conceived as a genus, and what will be its species? What is
   the differentia of Matter? In which genus, Matter or Form, are we to
   rank the composite of both? It may be this very composite which
   constitutes the Substance manifested in bodies, neither of the
   components by itself answering to the conception of Body: how, then,
   can we rank them in one and the same genus as the composite? How can
   the elements of a thing be brought within the same genus as the thing
   itself? Yet if we begin with bodies, our first-principles will be
   compounds.

   Why not resort to analogy? Admitted that the classification of the
   Sensible cannot proceed along the identical lines marked out for the
   Intellectual: is there any reason why we should not for
   Intellectual-Being substitute Matter, and for Intellectual Motion
   substitute Sensible Form, which is in a sense the life and consummation
   of Matter? The inertia of Matter would correspond with Stability, while
   the Identity and Difference of the Intellectual would find their
   counterparts in the similarity and diversity which obtain in the
   Sensible realm.

   But, in the first place, Matter does not possess or acquire Form as its
   life or its Act; Form enters it from without, and remains foreign to
   its nature. Secondly, Form in the Intellectual is an Act and a motion;
   in the Sensible Motion is different from Form and accidental to it:
   Form in relation to Matter approximates rather to Stability than to
   Motion; for by determining Matter's indetermination it confers upon it
   a sort of repose.

   In the higher realm Identity and Difference presuppose a unity at once
   identical and different: a thing in the lower is different only by
   participation in Difference and in relation to some other thing;
   Identity and Difference are here predicated of the particular, which is
   not, as in that realm, a posterior.

   As for Stability, how can it belong to Matter, which is distorted into
   every variety of mass, receiving its forms from without, and even with
   the aid of these forms incapable of offspring.

   This mode of division must accordingly be abandoned.

   3. How then do we go to work?

   Let us begin by distinguishing Matter, Form, the Mixture of both, and
   the Attributes of the Mixture. The Attributes may be subdivided into
   those which are mere predicates, and those serving also as accidents.
   The accidents may be either inclusive or included; they may, further,
   be classified as activities, experiences, consequents.

   Matter will be found common to all substances, not however as a genus,
   since it has no differentiae -- unless indeed differentiae be ascribed
   to it on the ground of its taking such various forms as fire and air.

   It may be held that Matter is sufficiently constituted a genus by the
   fact that the things in which it appears hold it in common, or in that
   it presents itself as a whole of parts. In this sense Matter will
   indeed be a genus, though not in the accepted sense of the term.
   Matter, we may remark, is also a single element, if the element as such
   is able to constitute a genus.

   Further, if to a Form be added the qualification "bound up with,
   involved in Matter," Matter separates that Form from other Forms: it
   does not however embrace the whole of Substantial Form [as, to be the
   genus of Form, it must].

   We may, again, regard Form as the creator of Substance and make the
   Reason-Principle of Substance dependent upon Form: yet we do not come
   thereby to an understanding of the nature of Substance.

   We may, also, restrict Substance to the Composite. Matter and Form then
   cease to be substances. If they are Substance equally with the
   Composite, it remains to enquire what there is common to all three.

   The "mere predicates" fall under the category of Relation: such are
   cause and element. The accidents included in the composite substances
   ire found to be either Quality or Quantity; those which are inclusive
   are of the nature of Space and Time. Activities and experiences
   comprise Motions; consequents Space and Time, which are consequents
   respectively of the Composites and of Motion.

   The first three entities [Matter, Form, Composite] go, as we have
   discovered, to make a single common genus, the Sensible counterpart of
   Substance. Then follow in order Relation, Quantity, Quality,
   Time-during-which, Place-in-which, Motion; though, with Time and Space
   already included [under Relation], Time-during-which and Place-in-which
   become superfluous.

   Thus we have five genera, counting the first three entities as one. If
   the first three are not massed into a unity, the series will be Matter,
   Form, Composite, Relation, Quantity, Quality, Motion. The last three
   may, again, be included in Relation, which is capable of bearing this
   wider extension.

   4. What, then, we have to ask, is the constant element in the first
   three entities? What is it that identifies them with their inherent
   Substance?

   Is it the capacity to serve as a base? But Matter, we maintain, serves
   as the base and seat of Form: Form, thus, will be excluded from the
   category of Substance. Again, the Composite is the base and seat of
   attributes: hence, Form combined with Matter will be the basic ground
   of Composites, or at any rate of all posteriors of the Composite --
   Quantity, Quality, Motion, and the rest.

   But perhaps we may think Substance validly defined as that which is not
   predicated of anything else. White and black are predicated of an
   object having one or other of these qualities; double presupposes
   something distinct from itself -- we refer not to the half, but to the
   length of wood of which doubleness is affirmed. father qua father is a
   predicate; knowledge is predicated of the subject in whom the knowledge
   exists; space is the limit of something, time the measure of something.
   Fire, on the other hand, is predicated of nothing; wood as such is
   predicated of nothing; and so with man, Socrates, and the composite
   substance in general.

   Equally the Substantial Form is never a predicate, since it never acts
   as a modification of anything. Form is not an attribute of Matter
   hence, is not predicable of Matter it is simply a constituent of the
   Couplement. On the other hand, the Form of a man is not different from
   the man himself [and so does not "modify" the Couplement].

   Matter, similarly, is part of a whole, and belongs to something else
   only as to a whole and not as to a separate thing of which it is
   predicated. White, on the contrary, essentially belongs to something
   distinct from itself.

   We conclude that nothing belonging to something else and predicated of
   it can be Substance. Substance is that which belongs essentially to
   itself, or, in so far as it is a part of the differentiated object,
   serves only to complete the Composite. Each or either part of the
   Composite belongs to itself, and is only affirmed of the Composite in a
   special sense: only qua part of the whole is it predicated of something
   else; qua individual it is never in its essential nature predicated of
   an external.

   It may be claimed as a common element in Matter, Form and the
   Couplement that they are all substrates. But the mode in which Matter
   is the substrate of Form is different from that in which Form and the
   Couplement are substrates of their modifications.

   And is it strictly true to say that Matter is the substrate of Form?
   Form is rather the completion which Matter's nature as pure
   potentiality demands.

   Moreover, Form cannot be said to reside in Matter [as in a substrate].
   When one thing combines with another to form a unity, the one does not
   reside in the other; both alike are substrates of a third: thus, Man
   [the Form] and a man [the Composite] are substrates of their
   experiences, and are prior to their activities and consequents.

   Substance, then, is that from which all other things proceed and to
   which they owe their existence; it is the centre of passivity and the
   source of action.

   5. These are incontrovertible facts in regard to the pseudo-substance
   of the Sensible realm: if they apply also in some degree to the True
   Substance of the Intellectual, the coincidence is, doubtless, to be
   attributed to analogy and ambiguity of terms.

   We are aware that "the first" is so called only in relation to the
   things which come after it: "first" has no absolute significance; the
   first of one series is subsequent to the last of another. "Substrate,"
   similarly, varies in meaning [as applied to the higher and to the
   lower], while as for passivity its very existence in the Intellectual
   is questionable; if it does exist there, it is not the passivity of the
   Sensible.

   It follows that the fact of "not being present in a subject [or
   substrate] is not universally true of Substance, unless presence in a
   subject be stipulated as not including the case of the part present in
   the whole or of one thing combining with another to form a distinct
   unity; a thing will not be present as in a subject in that with which
   it co-operates in the information of a composite substance. Form,
   therefore, is not present in Matter as in a subject, nor is Man so
   present in Socrates, since Man is part of Socrates.

   Substance, then, is that which is not present in a subject. But if we
   adopt the definition "neither present in a subject nor predicated of a
   subject," we must add to the second "subject" the qualification
   "distinct," in order that we may not exclude the case of Man predicated
   of a particular man. When I predicate Man of Socrates, it is as though
   I affirmed, not that a piece of wood is white, but that whiteness is
   white; for in asserting that Socrates is a man, I predicate Man [the
   universal] of a particular man, I affirm Man of the manhood in
   Socrates; I am really saying only that Socrates is Socrates, or that
   this particular rational animal is an animal.

   It may be objected that non-presence in a subject is not peculiar to
   Substance, inasmuch as the differentia of a substance is no more
   present in a subject than the substance itself; but this objection
   results from taking a part of the whole substance, such as "two-footed"
   in our example, and asserting that this part is not present in a
   subject: if we take, not "two-footed" which is merely an aspect of
   Substance, but "two-footedness" by which we signify not Substance but
   Quality, we shall find that this "two-footedness" is indeed present in
   a subject.

   We may be told that neither Time nor Place is present in a subject. But
   if the definition of Time as the measure of Motion be regarded as
   denoting something measured, the "measure" will be present in Motion as
   in a subject, while Motion will be present in the moved: if, on the
   contrary, it be supposed to signify a principle of measurement, the
   "measure" will be present in the measurer.

   Place is the limit of the surrounding space, and thus is present in
   that space.

   The truth is, however, that the "Substance" of our enquiry may be
   apprehended in directly opposite ways: it may be determined by one of
   the properties we have been discussing, by more than one, by all at
   once, according as they answer to the notions of Matter, Form and the
   Couplement.

   6. Granted, it may be urged, that these observations upon the nature of
   Substance are sound, we have not yet arrived at a statement of its
   essence. Our critic doubtless expects to see this "Sensible": but its
   essence, its characteristic being, cannot be seen.

   Do we infer that fire and water are not Substance? They certainly are
   not Substance because they are visible. Why, then? Because they possess
   Matter? No. Or Form? No. Nor because they involve a Couplement of
   Matter and Form. Then why are they Substance? By existing. But does not
   Quantity exist, and Quality? This anomaly is to be explained by an
   equivocation in the term "existence."

   What, then, is the meaning of "existence" as applied to fire, earth and
   the other elements? What is the difference between this existence and
   existence in the other categories? It is the difference between being
   simply -- that which merely is -- and being white. But surely the being
   qualified by "white" is the same as that having no qualification? It is
   not the same: the latter is Being in the primary sense, the former is
   Being only by participation and in a secondary degree. Whiteness added
   to Being produces a being white; Being added to whiteness produces a
   white being: thus, whiteness becomes an accident of Being, and Being an
   accident of whiteness.

   The case is not equivalent to predicating white of Socrates and
   Socrates of white: for Socrates remains the same, though white would
   appear to have a different meaning in the two propositions, since in
   predicating Socrates of white we include Socrates in the [whole] sphere
   of whiteness, whereas in the proposition "Socrates is white" whiteness
   is plainly an attribute of Socrates.

   "Being is white" implies, similarly, that Being possesses whiteness as
   an attribute, while in the proposition "whiteness is Being [or, is a
   being]" Being is regarded as comprising whiteness in its own extension.

   In sum, whiteness has existence because it is bound up with Being and
   present in it: Being is, thus, the source of its existence. Being is
   Being on its own account, but the white is due to whiteness -- not
   because it is "present in" whiteness, but because whiteness is present
   in it.

   The Being of the Sensible resembles the white in not originating in
   itself. It must therefore be regarded as dependent for its being upon
   the Authentic Being, as white is dependent upon the Authentic
   Whiteness, and the Authentic Whiteness dependent for its whiteness upon
   participation in that Supreme Being whose existence is underived.

   7. But Matter, it may be contended, is the source of existence to the
   Sensible things implanted in it. From what source, then, we retort,
   does Matter itself derive existence and being?

   That Matter is not a Primary we have established elsewhere. If it be
   urged that other things can have no subsistence without being implanted
   in Matter, we admit the claim for Sensible things. But though Matter be
   prior to these, it is not thereby precluded from being posterior to
   many things-posterior, in fact, to all the beings of the Intellectual
   sphere. Its existence is but a pale reflection, and less complete than
   that of the things implanted in it. These are Reason-Principles and
   more directly derived from Being: Matter has of itself no
   Reason-Principle whatever; it is but a shadow of a Principle, a vain
   attempt to achieve a Principle.

   But, our critic may pursue, Matter gives existence to the things
   implanted in it, just as Socrates gives existence to the whiteness
   implanted in himself? We reply that the higher being gives existence to
   the lower, the lower to the higher never.

   But once concede that Form is higher in the scale of Being than Matter,
   and Matter can no longer be regarded as a common ground of both, nor
   Substance as a genus embracing Matter, Form and the Couplement. True,
   these will have many common properties, to which we have already
   referred, but their being [or existence] will nonetheless be different.
   When a higher being comes into contact with a lower, the lower, though
   first in the natural order, is yet posterior in the scale of Reality:
   consequently, if Being does not belong in equal degrees to Matter, to
   Form and to the Couplement, Substance can no longer be common to all
   three in the sense of being their genus: to their posteriors it will
   bear a still different relation, serving them as a common base by being
   bound up with all alike. Substance, thus, resembles life, dim here,
   clearer there, or portraits of which one is an outline, another more
   minutely worked. By measuring Being by its dim manifestation and
   neglecting a fuller revelation elsewhere, we may come to regard this
   dim existence as a common ground.

   But this procedure is scarcely permissible. Every being is a distinct
   whole. The dim manifestation is in no sense a common ground, just as
   there is no common ground in the vegetal, the sensory and the
   intellectual forms of life.

   We conclude that the term "Being" must have different connotations as
   applied to Matter, to Form and to both conjointly, in spite of the
   single source pouring into the different streams.

   Take a second derived from a first and a third from the second: it is
   not merely that the one will rank higher and its successor be poorer
   and of lower worth; there is also the consideration that, even deriving
   from the same source, one thing, subjected in a certain degree to fire,
   will give us an earthen jar, while another, taking less of the heat,
   does not produce the jar.

   Perhaps we cannot even maintain that Matter and Form are derived from a
   single source; they are clearly in some sense different.

   8. The division into elements must, in short, be abandoned, especially
   in regard to Sensible Substance, known necessarily by sense rather than
   by reason. We must no longer look for help in constituent parts, since
   such parts will not be substances, or at any rate not sensible
   substances.

   Our plan must be to apprehend what is constant in stone, earth, water
   and the entities which they compose -- the vegetal and animal forms,
   considered purely as sensibles -- and to confine this constant within a
   single genus. Neither Matter nor Form will thus be overlooked, for
   Sensible Substance comports them; fire and earth and the two
   intermediaries consist of Matter and Form, while composite things are
   actually many substances in one. They all, moreover, have that common
   property which distinguishes them from other things: serving as
   subjects to these others, they are never themselves present in a
   subject nor predicated of any other thing. Similarly, all the
   characteristics which we have ascribed to Substance find a place in
   this classification.

   But Sensible Substance is never found apart from magnitude and quality:
   how then do we proceed to separate these accidents? If we subtract them
   -- magnitude, figure, colour, dryness, moistness -- what is there left
   to be regarded as Substance itself? All the substances under
   consideration are, of course, qualified.

   There is, however, something in relation to which whatever turns
   Substance into qualified Substance is accidental: thus, the whole of
   fire is not Substance, but only a part of it -- if the term "part" be
   allowed.

   What then can this "part" be? Matter may be suggested. But are we
   actually to maintain that the particular sensible substance consists of
   a conglomeration of qualities and Matter, while Sensible Substance as a
   whole is merely the sum of these coagulations in the uniform Matter,
   each one separately forming a quale or a quantum or else a thing of
   many qualities? Is it true to say that everything whose absence leaves
   subsistence incomplete is a part of the particular substance, while all
   that is accidental to the substance already existent takes independent
   rank and is not submerged in the mixture which constitutes this
   so-called substance?

   I decline to allow that whatever combines in this way with anything
   else is Substance if it helps to produce a single mass having quantity
   and quality, whereas taken by itself and divorced from this
   complementary function it is a quality: not everything which composes
   the amalgam is Substance, but only the amalgam as a whole.

   And let no one take exception on the ground that we produce Sensible
   Substance from non-substances. The whole amalgam itself is not True
   Substance; it is merely an imitation of that True Substance which has
   Being apart from its concomitants, these indeed being derived from it
   as the possessor of True Being. In the lower realm the case is
   different: the underlying ground is sterile, and from its inability to
   produce fails to attain to the status of Being; it remains a shadow,
   and on this shadow is traced a sketch -- the world of Appearance.

   9. So much for one of the genera -- the "Substance," so called, of the
   Sensible realm.

   But what are we to posit as its species? how divide this genus?

   The genus as a whole must be identified with body. Bodies may be
   divided into the characteristically material and the organic: the
   material bodies comprise fire, earth, water, air; the organic the
   bodies of plants and animals, these in turn admitting of formal
   differentiation.

   The next step is to find the species of earth and of the other
   elements, and in the case of organic bodies to distinguish plants
   according to their forms, and the bodies of animals either by their
   habitations -- on the earth, in the earth, and similarly for the other
   elements -- or else as light, heavy and intermediate. Some bodies, we
   shall observe, stand in the middle of the universe, others circumscribe
   it from above, others occupy the middle sphere: in each case we shall
   find bodies different in shape, so that the bodies of the living beings
   of the heavens may be differentiated from those of the other elements.

   Once we have classified bodies into the four species, we are ready to
   combine them on a different principle, at the same time intermingling
   their differences of place, form and constitution; the resultant
   combinations will be known as fiery or earthy on the basis of the
   excess or predominance of some one element.

   The distinction between First and Second Substances, between Fire and a
   given example of fire, entails a difference of a peculiar kind -- the
   difference between universal and particular. This however is not a
   difference characteristic of Substance; there is also in Quality the
   distinction between whiteness and the white object, between grammar and
   some particular grammar.

   The question may here be asked: "What deficiency has grammar compared
   with a particular grammar, and science as a whole in comparison with a
   science?" Grammar is certainly not posterior to the particular grammar:
   on the contrary, the grammar as in you depends upon the prior existence
   of grammar as such: the grammar as in you becomes a particular by the
   fact of being in you; it is otherwise identical with grammar the
   universal.

   Turn to the case of Socrates: it is not Socrates who bestows manhood
   upon what previously was not Man, but Man upon Socrates; the individual
   man exists by participation in the universal.

   Besides, Socrates is merely a particular instance of Man; this
   particularity can have no effect whatever in adding to his essential
   manhood.

   We may be told that Man [the universal] is Form alone, Socrates Form in
   Matter. But on this very ground Socrates will be less fully Man than
   the universal; for the Reason-Principle will be less effectual in
   Matter. If, on the contrary, Man is not determined by Form alone, but
   presupposes Matter, what deficiency has Man in comparison with the
   material manifestation of Man, or the Reason-Principle in isolation as
   compared with its embodiment in a unit of Matter?

   Besides, the more general is by nature prior; hence, the Form-Idea is
   prior to the individual: but what is prior by nature is prior
   unconditionally. How then can the Form take a lower rank? The
   individual, it is true, is prior in the sense of being more readily
   accessible to our cognisance; this fact, however, entails no objective
   difference.

   Moreover, such a difference, if established, would be incompatible with
   a single Reason-Principle of Substance; First and Second Substance
   could not have the same Principle, nor be brought under a single genus.

   10. Another method of division is possible: substances may be classed
   as hot-dry, dry-cold, cold-moist, or however we choose to make the
   coupling. We may then proceed to the combination and blending of these
   couples, either halting at that point and going no further than the
   compound, or else subdividing by habitation -- on the earth, in the
   earth -- or by form and by the differences exhibited by living beings,
   not qua living, but in their bodies viewed as instruments of life.

   Differentiation by form or shape is no more out of place than a
   division based on qualities -- heat, cold and the like. If it be
   objected that qualities go to make bodies what they are, then, we
   reply, so do blendings, colours, shapes. Since our discussion is
   concerned with Sensible Substance, it is not strange that it should
   turn upon distinctions related to sense-perception: this Substance is
   not Being pure and simple, but the Sensible Being which we call the
   Universe.

   We have remarked that its apparent subsistence is in fact an assemblage
   of Sensibles, their existence guaranteed to us by sense-perception. But
   since their combination is unlimited, our division must be guided by
   the Form-Ideas of living beings, as for example the Form-Idea of Man
   implanted in Body; the particular Form acts as a qualification of Body,
   but there is nothing unreasonable in using qualities as a basis of
   division.

   We may be told that we have distinguished between simple and composite
   bodies, even ranking them as opposites. But our distinction, we reply,
   was between material and organic bodies and raised no question of the
   composite. In fact, there exists no means of opposing the composite to
   the simple; it is necessary to determine the simples in the first stage
   of division, and then, combining them on the basis of a distinct
   underlying principle, to differentiate the composites in virtue of
   their places and shapes, distinguishing for example the heavenly from
   the earthly.

   These observations will suffice for the Being [Substance], or rather
   the Becoming, which obtains in the Sensible realm.

   11. Passing to Quantity and the quantum, we have to consider the view
   which identifies them with number and magnitude on the ground that
   everything quantitative is numbered among Sensible things or rated by
   the extension of its substrate: we are here, of course, discussing not
   Quantity in isolation, but that which causes a piece of wood to be
   three yards long and gives the five in "five horses,"

   Now we have often maintained that number and magnitude are to be
   regarded as the only true quantities, and that Space and Time have no
   right to be conceived as quantitative: Time as the measure of Motion
   should be assigned to Relation, while Space, being that which
   circumscribes Body, is also a relative and falls under the same
   category; though continuous, it is, like Motion, not included in
   Quantity.

   On the other hand, why do we not find in the category of Quantity
   "great" and "small"? It is some kind of Quantity which gives greatness
   to the great; greatness is not a relative, though greater and smaller
   are relatives, since these, like doubleness, imply an external
   correlative.

   What is it, then, which makes a mountain small and a grain of millet
   large? Surely, in the first place, "small" is equivalent to "smaller."
   It is admitted that the term is applied only to things of the same
   kind, and from this admission we may infer that the mountain is
   "smaller" rather than "small," and that the grain of millet is not
   large in any absolute sense but large for a grain of millet. In other
   words, since the comparison is between things of the same kind, the
   natural predicate would be a comparative.

   Again, why is not beauty classed as a relative? Beauty, unlike
   greatness, we regard as absolute and as a quality; "more beautiful" is
   the relative. Yet even the term "beautiful" may be attached to
   something which in a given relation may appear ugly: the beauty of man,
   for example, is ugliness when compared with that of the gods; "the most
   beautiful of monkeys," we may quote, "is ugly in comparison with any
   other type." Nonetheless, a thing is beautiful in itself; as related to
   something else it is either more or less beautiful.

   Similarly, an object is great in itself, and its greatness is due, not
   to any external, but to its own participation in the Absolute Great.

   Are we actually to eliminate the beautiful on the pretext that there is
   a more beautiful? No more then must we eliminate the great because of
   the greater: the greater can obviously have no existence whatever apart
   from the great, just as the more beautiful can have no existence
   without the beautiful.

   12. It follows that we must allow contrariety to Quantity: whenever we
   speak of great and small, our notions acknowledge this contrariety by
   evolving opposite images, as also when we refer to many and few;
   indeed, "few" and "many" call for similar treatment to "small" and
   "great."

   "Many," predicated of the inhabitants of a house, does duty for "more":
   "few" people are said to be in the theatre instead of "less."

   "Many," again, necessarily involves a large numerical plurality. This
   plurality can scarcely be a relative; it is simply an expansion of
   number, its contrary being a contraction.

   The same applies to the continuous [magnitude], the notion of which
   entails prolongation to a distant point.

   Quantity, then, appears whenever there is a progression from the unit
   or the point: if either progression comes to a rapid halt, we have
   respectively "few" and "small"; if it goes forward and does not quickly
   cease, "many" and "great."

   What, we may be asked, is the limit of this progression? What, we
   retort, is the limit of beauty, or of heat? Whatever limit you impose,
   there is always a "hotter"; yet "hotter" is accounted a relative, "hot"
   a pure quality.

   In sum, just as there is a Reason-Principle of Beauty, so there must be
   a Reason-Principle of greatness, participation in which makes a thing
   great, as the Principle of beauty makes it beautiful.

   To judge from these instances, there is contrariety in Quantity. Place
   we may neglect as not strictly coming under the category of Quantity;
   if it were admitted, "above" could only be a contrary if there were
   something in the universe which was "below": as referring to the
   partial, the terms "above" and "below" are used in a purely relative
   sense, and must go with "right" and "left" into the category of
   Relation.

   Syllable and discourse are only indirectly quantities or substrates of
   Quantity; it is voice that is quantitative: but voice is a kind of
   Motion; it must accordingly in any case [quantity or no quantity] be
   referred to Motion, as must activity also.

   13. It has been remarked that the continuous is effectually
   distinguished from the discrete by their possessing the one a common,
   the other a separate, limit.

   The same principle gives rise to the numerical distinction between odd
   and even; and it holds good that if there are differentiae found in
   both contraries, they are either to be abandoned to the objects
   numbered, or else to be considered as differentiae of the abstract
   numbers, and not of the numbers manifested in the sensible objects. If
   the numbers are logically separable from the objects, that is no reason
   why we should not think of them as sharing the same differentiae.

   But how are we to differentiate the continuous, comprising as it does
   line, surface and solid? The line may be rated as of one dimension, the
   surface as of two dimensions, the solid as of three, if we are only
   making a calculation and do not suppose that we are dividing the
   continuous into its species; for it is an invariable rule that numbers,
   thus grouped as prior and posterior, cannot be brought into a common
   genus; there is no common basis in first, second and third dimensions.
   Yet there is a sense in which they would appear to be equal -- namely,
   as pure measures of Quantity: of higher and lower dimensions, they are
   not however more or less quantitative.

   Numbers have similarly a common property in their being numbers all;
   and the truth may well be, not that One creates two, and two creates
   three, but that all have a common source.

   Suppose, however, that they are not derived from any source whatever,
   but merely exist; we at any rate conceive them as being derived, and so
   may be assumed to regard the smaller as taking priority over the
   greater: yet, even so, by the mere fact of their being numbers they are
   reducible to a single type.

   What applies to numbers is equally true of magnitudes; though here we
   have to distinguish between line, surface and solid -- the last also
   referred to as "body" -- in the ground that, while all are magnitudes,
   they differ specifically.

   It remains to enquire whether these species are themselves to be
   divided: the line into straight, circular, spiral; the surface into
   rectilinear and circular figures; the solid into the various solid
   figures -- sphere and polyhedra: whether these last should be
   subdivided, as by the geometers, into those contained by triangular and
   quadrilateral planes: and whether a further division of the latter
   should be performed.

   14. How are we to classify the straight line? Shall we deny that it is
   a magnitude?

   The suggestion may be made that it is a qualified magnitude. May we
   not, then, consider straightness as a differentia of "line"? We at any
   rate draw on Quality for differentiae of Substance.

   The straight line is, thus, a quantity plus a differentia; but it is
   not on that account a composite made up of straightness and line: if it
   be a composite, the composite possesses a differentiae of its own.

   But [if the line is a quantity] why is not the product of three lines
   included in Quantity? The answer is that a triangle consists not merely
   of three lines but of three lines in a particular disposition, a
   quadrilateral of four lines in a particular disposition: even the
   straight line involves disposition as well as quantity.

   Holding that the straight line is not mere quantity, we should
   naturally proceed to assert that the line as limited is not mere
   quantity, but for the fact that the limit of a line is a point, which
   is in the same category, Quantity. Similarly, the limited surface will
   be a quantity, since lines, which have a far better right than itself
   to this category, constitute its limits. With the introduction of the
   limited surface -- rectangle, hexagon, polygon -- into the category of
   Quantity, this category will be brought to include every figure
   whatsoever.

   If however by classing the triangle and the rectangle as qualia we
   propose to bring figures under Quality, we are not thereby precluded
   from assigning the same object to more categories than one: in so far
   as it is a magnitude -- a magnitude of such and such a size -- it will
   belong to Quantity; in so far as it presents a particular shape, to
   Quality.

   It may be urged that the triangle is essentially a particular shape.
   Then what prevents our ranking the sphere also as a quality?

   To proceed on these lines would lead us to the conclusion that geometry
   is concerned not with magnitudes but with Quality. But this conclusion
   is untenable; geometry is the study of magnitudes. The differences of
   magnitudes do not eliminate the existence of magnitudes as such, any
   more than the differences of substances annihilate the substances
   themselves.

   Moreover, every surface is limited; it is impossible for any surface to
   be infinite in extent.

   Again, when I find Quality bound up with Substance, I regard it as
   substantial quality: I am not less, but far more, disposed to see in
   figures or shapes [qualitative] varieties of Quantity. Besides, if we
   are not to regard them as varieties of magnitude, to what genus are we
   to assign them?

   Suppose, then, that we allow differences of magnitude; we commit
   ourselves to a specific classification of the magnitudes so
   differentiated.

   15. How far is it true that equality and inequality are characteristic
   of Quantity?

   Triangles, it is significant, are said to be similar rather than equal.
   But we also refer to magnitudes as similar, and the accepted
   connotation of similarity does not exclude similarity or dissimilarity
   in Quantity. It may, of course, be the case that the term "similarity"
   has a different sense here from that understood in reference to
   Quality.

   Furthermore, if we are told that equality and inequality are
   characteristic of Quantity, that is not to deny that similarity also
   may be predicated of certain quantities. If, on the contrary,
   similarity and dissimilarity are to be confined to Quality, the terms
   as applied to Quantity must, as we have said, bear a different meaning.

   But suppose similarity to be identical in both genera; Quantity and
   Quality must then be expected to reveal other properties held in
   common.

   May the truth be this: that similarity is predicable of Quantity only
   in so far as Quantity possesses [qualitative] differences? But as a
   general rule differences are grouped with that of which they are
   differences, especially when the difference is a difference of that
   thing alone. If in one case the difference completes the substance and
   not in another, we inevitably class it with that which it completes,
   and only consider it as independent when it is not complementary: when
   we say "completes the substance," we refer not to Subtance as such but
   to the differentiated substance; the particular object is to be thought
   of as receiving an accession which is non-substantial.

   We must not however fad to observe that we predicate equality of
   triangles, rectangles, and figures generally, whether plane or solid:
   this may be given as a ground for regarding equality and inequality as
   characteristic of Quantity.

   It remains to enquire whether similarity and dissimilarity are
   characteristic of Quality.

   We have spoken of Quality as combining with other entities, Matter and
   Quantity, to form the complete Sensible Substance; this Substance, so
   called, may be supposed to constitute the manifold world of Sense,
   which is not so much an essence as a quale. Thus, for the essence of
   fire we must look to the Reason-Principle; what produces the visible
   aspect is, properly speaking, a quale.

   Man's essence will lie in his Reason-Principle; that which is perfected
   in the corporeal nature is a mere image of the Reason-Principle a quale
   rather than an essence.

   Consider: the visible Socrates is a man, yet we give the name of
   Socrates to that likeness of him in a portrait, which consists of mere
   colours, mere pigments: similarly, it is a Reason-Principle which
   constitutes Socrates, but we apply the name Socrates to the Socrates we
   see: in truth, however, the colours and shapes which make up the
   visible Socrates are but reproductions of those in the
   Reason-Principle, while this Reason-Principle itself bears a
   corresponding relation to the truest Reason-Principle of Man. But we
   need not elaborate this point.

   16. When each of the entities bound up with the pseudo-substance is
   taken apart from the rest, the name of Quality is given to that one
   among them, by which without pointing to essence or quantity or motion
   we signify the distinctive mark, the type or aspect of a thing -- for
   example, the beauty or ugliness of a body. This beauty -- need we say?
   -- is identical in name only with Intellectual Beauty: it follows that
   the term "Quality" as applied to the Sensible and the Intellectual is
   necessarily equivocal; even blackness and whiteness are different in
   the two spheres.

   But the beauty in the germ, in the particular Reason-Principle -- is
   this the same as the manifested beauty, or do they coincide only in
   name? Are we to assign this beauty -- and the same question applies to
   deformity in the soul -- to the Intellectual order, or to the Sensible?
   That beauty is different in the two spheres is by now clear. If it be
   embraced in Sensible Quality, then virtue must also be classed among
   the qualities of the lower. But merely some virtues will take rank as
   Sensible, others as Intellectual qualities.

   It may even be doubted whether the arts, as Reason-Principles, can
   fairly be among Sensible qualities; Reason-Principles, it is true, may
   reside in Matter, but "matter" for them means Soul. On the other hand,
   their being found in company with Matter commits them in some degree to
   the lower sphere. Take the case of lyrical music: it is performed upon
   strings; melody, which may be termed a part of the art, is sensuous
   sound -- though, perhaps, we should speak here not of parts but of
   manifestations [Acts]: yet, called manifestations, they are nonetheless
   sensuous. The beauty inherent in body is similarly bodiless; but we
   have assigned it to the order of things bound up with body and
   subordinate to it.

   Geometry and arithmetic are, we shall maintain, of a twofold character;
   in their earthly types they rank with Sensible Quality, but in so far
   as they are functions of pure Soul, they necessarily belong to that
   other world in close proximity to the Intellectual. This, too, is in
   Plato's view the case with music and astronomy.

   The arts concerned with material objects and making use of perceptible
   instruments and sense-perception must be classed with Sensible Quality,
   even though they are dispositions of the Soul, attendant upon its
   apostasy.

   There is also every reason for consigning to this category the
   practical virtues whose function is directed to a social end: these do
   not isolate Soul by inclining it towards the higher; their
   manifestation makes for beauty in this world, a beauty regarded not as
   necessary but as desirable.

   On this principle, the beauty in the germ, and still more the blackness
   and whiteness in it, will be included among Sensible Qualities.

   Are we, then, to rank the individual soul, as containing these
   Reason-Principles, with Sensible Substance? But we do not even identify
   the Principles with body; we merely include them in Sensible Quality on
   the ground that they are connected with body and are activities of
   body. The constituents of Sensible Substance have already been
   specified; we have no intention whatever of adding to them Substance
   bodiless.

   As for Qualities, we hold that they are invariably bodiless, being
   affections arising within Soul; but, like the Reason-Principles of the
   individual soul, they are associated with Soul in its apostasy, and are
   accordingly counted among the things of the lower realm: such
   affections, torn between two worlds by their objects and their abode,
   we have assigned to Quality, which is indeed not bodily but manifested
   in body.

   But we refrain from assigning Soul to Sensible Substance, on the ground
   that we have already referred to Quality [which is Sensible] those
   affections of Soul which are related to body. On the contrary, Soul,
   conceived apart from affection and Reason-Principle, we have restored
   to its origin, leaving in the lower realm no substance which is in any
   sense Intellectual.

   17. This procedure, if approved, will entail a distinction between
   psychic and bodily qualities, the latter belonging specifically to
   body.

   If we decide to refer all souls to the higher, we are still at liberty
   to perform for Sensible qualities a division founded upon the senses
   themselves -- the eyes, the ears, touch, taste, smell; and if we are to
   look for further differences, colours may be subdivided according to
   varieties of vision, sounds according to varieties of hearing, and so
   with the other senses: sounds may also be classified qualitatively as
   sweet, harsh, soft.

   Here a difficulty may be raised: we divide the varieties of Substance
   and their functions and activities, fair or foul or indeed of any kind
   whatsoever, on the basis of Quality, Quantity rarely, if ever, entering
   into the differences which produce species; Quantity, again, we divide
   in accordance with qualities of its own: how then are we to divide
   Quality itself into species? what differences are we to employ, and
   from what genus shall we take them? To take them from Quality itself
   would be no less absurd than setting up substances as differences of
   substances.

   How, then, are we to distinguish black from white? how differentiate
   colours in general from tastes and tangible qualities? By the variety
   of sense-organs? Then there will be no difference in the objects
   themselves.

   But, waiving this objection, how deal with qualities perceived by the
   same sense-organ? We may be told that some colours integrate, others
   disintegrate the vision, that some tastes integrate, others
   disintegrate the tongue: we reply that, first, it is the actual
   experiences [of colour and taste, and not the sense-organs] that we are
   discussing and it is to these that the notions of integration and
   disintegration must be applied; secondly, a means of differentiating
   these experiences has not been offered.

   It may be suggested that we divide them by their powers, and this
   suggestion is so far reasonable that we may well agree to divide the
   non-sensuous qualities, the sciences for example, on this basis; but we
   see no reason for resorting to their effects for the division of
   qualities sensuous. Even if we divide the sciences by their powers,
   founding our division of their processes upon the faculties of the
   mind, we can only grasp their differences in a rational manner if we
   look not only to their subject-matter but also to their
   Reason-Principles.

   But, granted that we may divide the arts by their Reason-Principles and
   theorems, this method will hardly apply to embodied qualities. Even in
   the arts themselves an explanation would be required for the
   differences between the Reason-Principles themselves. Besides, we have
   no difficulty in seeing that white differs from black; to account for
   this difference is the purpose of our enquiry.

   18. These problems at any rate all serve to show that, while in general
   it is necessary to look for differences by which to separate things
   from each other, to hunt for differences of the differences themselves
   is both futile and irrational. We cannot have substances of substances,
   quantities of quantities, qualities of qualities, differences of
   differences; differences must, where possible, be found outside the
   genus, in creative powers and the like: but where no such criteria are
   present, as in distinguishing dark-green from pale-green, both being
   regarded as derived from white and black, what expedient may be
   suggested?

   Sense-perception and intelligence may be trusted to indicate diversity
   but not to explain it: explanation is outside the province of
   sense-perception, whose function is merely to produce a variety of
   information; while, as for intelligence, it works exclusively with
   intuitions and never resorts to explanations to justify them; there is
   in the movements of intelligence a diversity which separates one object
   from another, making further differentiation unnecessary.

   Do all qualities constitute differentiae, or not? Granted that
   whiteness and colours in general and the qualities dependent upon touch
   and taste can, even while they remain species [of Quality], become
   differentiae of other things, how can grammar and music serve as
   differentiae? Perhaps in the sense that minds may be distinguished as
   grammatical and musical, especially if the qualities are innate, in
   which case they do become specific differentiae.

   It remains to decide whether there can be any differentia derived from
   the genus to which the differentiated thing belongs, or whether it must
   of necessity belong to another genus? The former alternative would
   produce differentiae of things derived from the same genus as the
   differentiae themselves -- for example, qualities of qualities. Virtue
   and vice are two states differing in quality: the states are qualities,
   and their differentiae qualities -- unless indeed it be maintained that
   the state undifferentiated is not a quality, that the differentia
   creates the quality.

   But consider the sweet as beneficial, the bitter as injurious: then
   bitter and sweet are distinguished, not by Quality, but by Relation. We
   might also be disposed to identify the sweet with the thick, and the
   Pungent with the thin: "thick" however hardly reveals the essence but
   merely the cause of sweetness -- an argument which applies equally to
   pungency.

   We must therefore reflect whether it may be taken as an invariable rule
   that Quality is never a differentia of Quality, any more than Substance
   is a differentia of Substance, or Quantity of Quantity.

   Surely, it may be interposed, five differs from three by two. No: it
   exceeds it by two; we do not say that it differs: how could it differ
   by a "two" in the "three"? We may add that neither can Motion differ
   from Motion by Motion. There is, in short, no parallel in any of the
   other genera.

   In the case of virtue and vice, whole must be compared with whole, and
   the differentiation conducted on this basis. As for the differentia
   being derived from the same genus as themselves, namely, Quality, and
   from no other genus, if we proceed on the principle that virtue is
   bound up with pleasure, vice with lust, virtue again with the
   acquisition of food, vice with idle extravagance, and accept these
   definitions as satisfactory, then clearly we have, here too,
   differentiae which are not qualities.

   19. With Quality we have undertaken to group the dependent qualia, in
   so far as Quality is bound up with them; we shall not however introduce
   into this category the qualified objects [qua objects], that we may not
   be dealing with two categories at once; we shall pass over the objects
   to that which gives them their [specific] name.

   But how are we to classify such terms as "not white"? If "not white"
   signifies some other colour, it is a quality. But if it is merely a
   negation of an enumeration of things not white, it will be either a
   meaningless sound, or else a name or definition of something actual: if
   a sound, it is a kind of motion; if a name or definition, it is a
   relative, inasmuch as names and definitions are significant. But if not
   only the things enumerated are in some one genus, but also the
   propositions and terms in question must be each of them significative
   of some genus, then we shall assert that negative propositions and
   terms posit certain things within a restricted field and deny others.
   Perhaps, however, it would be better, in view of their composite
   nature, not to include the negations in the same genus as the
   affirmations.

   What view, then, shall we take of privations? If they are privations of
   qualities, they will themselves be qualities: "toothless" and "blind,"
   for example, are qualities. "Naked" and "dothed," on the other hand,
   are neither of them qualities but states: they therefore comport a
   relation to something else.

   [With regard to passive qualities:]

   Passivity, while it lasts, is not a quality but a motion; when it is a
   past experience remaining in one's possession, it is a quality; if one
   ceases to possess the experience then regarded as a finished
   occurrence, one is considered to have been moved -- in other words, to
   have been in Motion. But in none of these cases is it necessary to
   conceive of anything but Motion; the idea of time should be excluded;
   even present time has no right to be introduced.

   "Well" and similar adverbial expressions are to be referred to the
   single generic notion [of Quality].

   It remains to consider whether blushing should be referred to Quality,
   even though the person blushing is not included in this category. The
   fact of becoming flushed is rightly not referred to Quality; for it
   involves passivity -- in short, Motion. But if one has ceased to become
   flushed and is actually red, this is surely a case of Quality, which is
   independent of time. How indeed are we to define Quality but by the
   aspect which a substance presents? By predicating of a man redness, we
   clearly ascribe to him a quality.

   We shall accordingly maintain that states alone, and not dispositions,
   constitute qualities: thus, "hot" is a quality but not "growing hot,"
   "ill" but not "turning ill."

   20. We have to ascertain whether there is not to every quality a
   contrary. In the case of virtue and vice, even the mean appears to be
   contrary to the extremes.

   But when we turn to colours, we do not find the intermediates so
   related. If we regard the intermediates as blendings of the extremes,
   we must not posit any contrariety other than that between black and
   white, but must show that all other colours are combinations of these
   two. Contrariety however demands that there be some one distinct
   quality in the intermediates, though this quality may be seen to arise
   from a combination.

   It may further be suggested that contraries not only differ from each
   other, but also entail the greatest possible difference. But "the
   greatest possible difference" would seem to presuppose that
   intermediates have already been established: eliminate the series, and
   how will you define "the greatest possible"? Sight, we may be told,
   will reveal to us that grey is nearer than black to white; and taste
   may be our judge when we have hot, cold and no intermediate.

   That we are accustomed to act upon these assumptions is obvious enough;
   but the following considerations may perhaps commend themselves:

   White and yellow are entirely different from each other -- a statement
   which applies to any colour whatsoever as compared with any other; they
   are accordingly contrary qualities. Their contrariety is independent of
   the presence of intermediates: between health and disease no
   intermediate intrudes, and yet they are contraries.

   It may be urged that the products of a contrariety exhibit the greatest
   diversity. But "the greatest diversity" is clearly meaningless, unless
   we can point to lower degrees of diversity in the means. Thus, we
   cannot speak of "the greatest diversity" in reference to health and
   disease. This definition of contrariety is therefore inadmissible.

   Suppose that we say "great diversity" instead of "the greatest": if
   "great" is equivalent to greater and implies a less, immediate
   contraries will again escape us; if, on the other hand, we mean
   strictly "great" and assume that every quality shows a great divergence
   from every other, we must not suppose that the divergence can be
   measured by a comparative.

   Nonetheless, we must endeavour to find a meaning for the term
   "contrary." Can we accept the principle that when things have a certain
   similarity which is not generic nor in any sense due to admixture, but
   a similarity residing in their forms -- if the term be permitted --
   they differ in degree but are not contraries; contraries being rather
   those things which have no specific identity? It would be necessary to
   stipulate that they belong to the same genus, Quality, in order to
   cover those immediate contraries which [apparently] have nothing
   conducing to similarity, inasmuch as there are no intermediates looking
   both ways, as it were, and having a mutual similarity to each other;
   some contraries are precluded by their isolation from similarity.

   If these observations be sound, colours which have a common ground will
   not be contraries. But there will be nothing to prevent, not indeed
   every colour from being contrary to every other, but any one colour
   from being contrary to any other; and similarly with tastes. This will
   serve as a statement of the problem.

   As for Degree [subsisting in Quality], it was given as our opinion that
   it exists in the objects participating in Quality, though whether it
   enters into qualities as such -- into health and justice -- was left
   open to question. If indeed these qualities possess an extension quite
   apart from their participants, we must actually ascribe to them
   degrees: but in truth they belong to a sphere where each entity is the
   whole and does not admit of degree.

   21. The claim of Motion to be established as a genus will depend upon
   three conditions: first, that it cannot rightly be referred to any
   other genus; second, that nothing higher than itself can be predicated
   of it in respect of its essence; third, that by assuming differences it
   will produce species. These conditions satisfied, we may consider the
   nature of the genus to which we shall refer it.

   Clearly it cannot be identified with either the Substance or the
   Quality of the things which possess it. It cannot, further, be
   consigned to Action, for Passivity also comprises a variety of motions;
   nor again to Passivity itself, because many motions are actions: on the
   contrary, actions and passions are to be referred to Motion.

   Furthermore, it cannot lay claim to the category of Relation on the
   mere ground that it has an attributive and not a self-centred
   existence: on this ground, Quality too would find itself in that same
   category; for Quality is an attribute and contained in an external: and
   the same is true of Quantity.

   If we are agreed that Quality and Quantity, though attributive, are
   real entities, and on the basis of this reality distinguishable as
   Quality and Quantity respectively: then, on the same principle, since
   Motion, though an attribute has a reality prior to its attribution, it
   is incumbent upon us to discover the intrinsic nature of this reality.
   We must never be content to regard as a relative something which exists
   prior to its attribution, but only that which is engendered by Relation
   and has no existence apart from the relation to which it owes its name:
   the double, strictly so called, takes birth and actuality in
   juxtaposition with a yard's length, and by this very process of being
   juxtaposed with a correlative acquires the name and exhibits the fact
   of being double.

   What, then, is that entity, called Motion, which, though attributive,
   has an independent reality, which makes its attribution possible -- the
   entity corresponding to Quality, Quantity and Substance?

   But first, perhaps, we should make sure that there is nothing prior to
   Motion and predicated of it as its genus.

   Change may be suggested as a prior. But, in the first place, either it
   is identical with Motion, or else, if change be claimed as a genus, it
   will stand distinct from the genera so far considered: secondly, Motion
   will evidently take rank as a species and have some other species
   opposed to it -- becoming, say -- which will be regarded as a change
   but not as a motion.

   What, then, is the ground for denying that becoming is a motion? The
   fact, perhaps, that what comes to be does not yet exist, whereas Motion
   has no dealings with the non-existent. But, on that ground, becoming
   will not be a change either. If however it be alleged that becoming is
   merely a type of alteration or growth since it takes place when things
   alter and grow, the antecedents of becoming are being confused with
   becoming itself. Yet becoming, entailing as it does these antecedents,
   must necessarily be a distinct species; for the event and process of
   becoming cannot be identified with merely passive alteration, like
   turning hot or white: it is possible for the antecedents to take place
   without becoming as such being accomplished, except in so far as the
   actual alteration [implied in the antecedents] has "come to be"; where,
   however, an animal or a vegetal life is concerned, becoming [or birth]
   takes place only upon its acquisition of a Form.

   The contrary might be maintained: that change is more plausibly ranked
   as a species than is Motion, because change signifies merely the
   substitution of one thing for another, whereas Motion involves also the
   removal of a thing from the place to which it belongs, as is shown by
   locomotion. Even rejecting this distinction, we must accept as types of
   Motion knowledge and musical performance -- in short, changes of
   condition: thus, alteration will come to be regarded as a species of
   Motion -- namely, motion displacing.

   22. But suppose that we identify alteration with Motion on the ground
   that Motion itself results in difference: how then do we proceed to
   define Motion?

   It may roughly be characterized as the passage from the potentiality to
   its realization. That is potential which can either pass into a Form --
   for example, the potential statue -- or else pass into actuality --
   such as the ability to walk: whenever progress is made towards the
   statue, this progress is Motion; and when the ability to walk is
   actualized in walking, this walking is itself Motion: dancing is,
   similarly, the motion produced by the potential dancer taking his
   steps.

   In the one type of Motion a new Form comes into existence created by
   the motion; the other constitutes, as it were, the pure Form of the
   potentiality, and leaves nothing behind it when once the motion has
   ceased. Accordingly, the view would not be unreasonable which, taking
   some Forms to be active, others inactive, regarded Motion as a dynamic
   Form in opposition to the other Forms which are static, and further as
   the cause of whatever new Form ensues upon it. To proceed to identify
   this bodily motion with life would however be unwarrantable; it must be
   considered as identical only in name with the motions of Intellect and
   Soul.

   That Motion is a genus we may be all the more confident in virtue of
   the difficulty -- the impossibility even -- of confining it within a
   definition.

   But how can it be a Form in cases where the motion leads to
   deterioration, or is purely passive? Motion, we may suggest, is like
   the heat of the sun causing some things to grow and withering others.
   In so far as Motion is a common property, it is identical in both
   conditions; its apparent difference is due to the objects moved.

   Is, then, becoming ill identical with becoming well? As motions they
   are identical. In what respect, then, do they differ? In their
   substrates? or is there some other criterion?

   This question may however be postponed until we come to consider
   alteration: at present we have to discover what is the constant element
   in every motion, for only on this basis can we establish the claim of
   Motion to be a genus.

   Perhaps the one term covers many meanings; its claim to generic status
   would then correspond to that of Being.

   As a solution of the problem we may suggest that motions conducing to
   the natural state or functioning in natural conditions should perhaps,
   as we have already asserted, be regarded as being in a sense Forms,
   while those whose direction is contrary to nature must be supposed to
   be assimilated to the results towards which they lead.

   But what is the constant element in alteration, in growth and birth and
   their opposites, in local change? What is that which makes them all
   motions? Surely it is the fact that in every case the object is never
   in the same state before and after the motion, that it cannot remain
   still and in complete inactivity but, so long as the motion is present,
   is continually urged to take a new condition, never acquiescing in
   Identity but always courting Difference; deprived of Difference, Motion
   perishes.

   Thus, Difference may be predicated of Motion, not merely in the sense
   that it arises and persists in a difference of conditions, but in the
   sense of being itself perpetual difference. It follows that Time, as
   being created by Motion, also entails perpetual difference: Time is the
   measure of unceasing Motion, accompanying its course and, as it were,
   carried along its stream.

   In short, the common basis of all Motion is the existence of a
   progression and an urge from potentiality and the potential to
   actuality and the actual: everything which has any kind of motion
   whatsoever derives this motion from a pre-existent potentiality within
   itself of activity or passivity.

   23. The Motion which acts upon Sensible objects enters from without,
   and so shakes, drives, rouses and thrusts its participants that they
   may neither rest nor preserve their identity -- and all to the end that
   they may be caught into that restlessness, that flustering excitability
   which is but an image of Life.

   We must avoid identifying Motion with the objects moved: by walking we
   do not mean the feet but the activity springing from a potentiality in
   the feet. Since the potentiality is invisible, we see of necessity only
   the active feet -- that is to say, not feet simply, as would be the
   case if they were at rest, but something besides feet, something
   invisible but indirectly seen as an accompaniment by the fact that we
   observe the feet to be in ever-changing positions and no longer at
   rest. We infer alteration, on the other hand, from the qualitative
   change in the thing altered.

   Where, then, does Motion reside, when there is one thing that moves and
   another that passes from an inherent potentiality to actuality? In the
   mover? How then will the moved, the patient, participate in the motion?
   In the moved? Then why does not Motion remain in it, once having come?
   It would seem that Motion must neither be separated from the active
   principle nor allowed to reside in it; it must proceed from agent to
   patient without so inhering in the latter as to be severed from the
   former, passing from one to the other like a breath of wind.

   Now, when the potentiality of Motion consists in an ability to walk, it
   may be imagined as thrusting a man forward and causing him to be
   continually adopting a different position; when it lies in the capacity
   to heat, it heats; when the potentiality takes hold of Matter and
   builds up the organism, we have growth; and when another potentiality
   demolishes the structure, the result is decay, that which has the
   potentiality of demolition experiencing the decay. Where the
   birth-giving principle is active, we find birth; where it is impotent
   and the power to destroy prevails, destruction takes place -- not the
   destruction of what already exists, but that which intervenes upon the
   road to existence.

   Health comes about in the same way -- when the power which produces
   health is active and predominant; sickness is the result of the
   opposite power working in the opposite direction.

   Thus, Motion is conditioned, not only by the objects in which it
   occurs, but also by its origins and its course, and it is a distinctive
   mark of Motion to be always qualified and to take its quality from the
   moved.

   24. With regard to locomotion: if ascending is to be held contrary to
   descending, and circular motion different [in kind] from motion in a
   straight line, we may ask how this difference is to be defined -- the
   difference, for example, between throwing over the head and under the
   feet.

   The driving power is one -- though indeed it might be maintained that
   the upward drive is different from the downward, and the downward
   passage of a different character from the upward, especially if it be a
   natural motion, in which case the up-motion constitutes lightness, the
   down-motion heaviness.

   But in all these motions alike there is the common tendency to seek an
   appointed place, and in this tendency we seem to have the differentia
   which separates locomotion from the other species.

   As for motion in a circle and motion in a straight line, if the former
   is in practice indistinguishable from the latter, how can we regard
   them as different? The only difference lies in the shape of the course,
   unless the view be taken that circular motion is "impure," as not being
   entirely a motion, not involving a complete surrender of identity.

   However, it appears in general that locomotion is a definite unity,
   taking its differences from externals.

   25. The nature of integration and disintegrations calls for scrutiny.
   Are they different from the motions above mentioned, from coming-to-be
   and passing-away, from growth and decay, from change of place and from
   alteration? or must they be referred to these? or, again, must some of
   these be regarded as types of integration and disintegration?

   If integration implies that one element proceeds towards another,
   implies in short an approach, and disintegration, on the other hand, a
   retreat into the background, such motions may be termed local; we have
   clearly a case of two things moving in the direction of unity, or else
   making away from each other.

   If however the things achieve a sort of fusion, mixture, blending, and
   if a unity comes into being, not when the process of combination is
   already complete, but in the very act of combining, to which of our
   specified motions shall we refer this type? There will certainly be
   locomotion at first, but it will be succeeded by something different;
   just as in growth locomotion is found at the outset, though later it is
   supplanted by quantitative motion. The present case is similar:
   locomotion leads the way, but integration or disintegration does not
   inevitably follow; integration takes place only when the impinging
   elements become intertwined, disintegration only when they are rent
   asunder by the contact.

   On the other hand, it often happens that locomotion follows
   disintegration, or else occurs simultaneously, though the experience of
   the disintegrated is not conceived in terms of locomotion: so too in
   integration a distinct experience, a distinct unification, accompanies
   the locomotion and remains separate from it.

   Are we then to posit a new species for these two motions, adding to
   them, perhaps, alteration? A thing is altered by becoming dense -- in
   other words, by integration; it is altered again by being rarefied --
   that is, by disintegration. When wine and water are mixed, something is
   produced different from either of the pre-existing elements: thus,
   integration takes place, resulting in alteration.

   But perhaps we should recall a previous distinction, and while holding
   that integrations and disintegrations precede alterations, should
   maintain that alterations are nonetheless distinct from either; that,
   further, not every alteration is of this type [presupposing, that is to
   say, integration or disintegration], and, in particular, rarefication
   and condensation are not identical with disintegration and integration,
   nor in any sense derived from them: to suppose that they were would
   involve the admission of a vacuum.

   Again, can we use integration and disintegration to explain blackness
   and whiteness? But to doubt the independent existence of these
   qualities means that, beginning with colours, we may end by
   annihilating almost all qualities, or rather all without exception; for
   if we identify every alteration, or qualitative change, with
   integration and disintegration, we allow nothing whatever to come into
   existence; the same elements persist, nearer or farther apart.

   Finally, how is it possible to class learning and being taught as
   integrations?

   26. We may now take the various specific types of Motion, such as
   locomotion, and once again enquire for each one whether it is not to be
   divided on the basis of direction, up, down, straight, circular -- a
   question already raised; whether the organic motion should be
   distinguished from the inorganic -- they are clearly not alike;
   whether, again, organic motions should be subdivided into walking,
   swimming and flight.

   Perhaps we should also distinguish, in each species, natural from
   unnatural motions: this distinction would however imply that motions
   have differences which are not external. It may indeed be the case that
   motions create these differences and cannot exist without them; but
   Nature may be supposed to be the ultimate source of motions and
   differences alike.

   Motions may also be classed as natural, artificial and purposive:
   "natural" embracing growth and decay; "artificial" architecture and
   shipbuilding; "purposive" enquiry, learning, government, and, in
   general, all speech and action.

   Again, with regard to growth, alteration and birth, the division may
   proceed from the natural and unnatural, or, speaking generally, from
   the characters of the moved objects.

   27. What view are we to take of that which is opposed to Motion,
   whether it be Stability or Rest? Are we to consider it as a distinct
   genus, or to refer it to one of the genera already established? We
   should, no doubt, be well advised to assign Stability to the
   Intellectual, and to look in the lower sphere for Rest alone.

   First, then, we have to discover the precise nature of this Rest. If it
   presents itself as identical with Stability, we have no right to expect
   to find it in the sphere where nothing is stable and the apparently
   stable has merely a less strenuous motion.

   Suppose the contrary: we decide that Rest is different from Stability
   inasmuch as Stability belongs to the utterly immobile, Rest to the
   stationary which, though of a nature to move, does not move. Now, if
   Rest means coming to rest, it must be regarded as a motion which has
   not yet ceased but still continues; but if we suppose it to be
   incompatible with Motion, we have first to ask whether there is in the
   Sensible world anything without motion.

   Yet nothing can experience every type of motion; certain motions must
   be ruled out in order that we may speak of the moving object as
   existing: may we not, then, say of that which has no locomotion and is
   at rest as far as pertains to that specific type of motion, simply that
   it does not move?

   Rest, accordingly, is the negation of Motion: in other words, it has no
   generic status. It is in fact related only to one type of motion,
   namely, locomotion; it is therefore the negation of this motion that is
   meant.

   But, it may be asked, why not regard Motion as the negation of
   Stability? We reply that Motion does not appear alone; it is
   accompanied by a force which actualizes its object, forcing it on, as
   it were, giving it a thousand forms and destroying them all: Rest, on
   the contrary, comports nothing but the object itself, and signifies
   merely that the object has no motion.

   Why, then, did we not in discussing the Intellectual realm assert that
   Stability was the negation of Motion? Because it is not indeed possible
   to consider Stability as an annulling of Motion, for when Motion ceases
   Stability does not exist, but requires for its own existence the
   simultaneous existence of Motion; and what is of a nature to move is
   not stationary because Stability of that realm is motionless, but
   because Stability has taken hold of it; in so far as it has Motion, it
   will never cease to move: thus, it is stationary under the influence of
   Stability, and moves under the influence of Motion. In the lower realm,
   too, a thing moves in virtue of Motion, but its Rest is caused by a
   deficiency; it has been deprived of its due motion.

   What we have to observe is the essential character of this Sensible
   counterpart of Stability.

   Consider sickness and health. The convalescent moves in the sense that
   he passes from sickness to health. What species of rest are we to
   oppose to this convalescence? If we oppose the condition from which he
   departs, that condition is sickness, not Stability; if that into which
   he passes, it is health, again not the same as Stability.

   It may be declared that health or sickness is indeed some form of
   Stability: we are to suppose, then, that Stability is the genus of
   which health and sickness are species; which is absurd.

   Stability may, again, be regarded as an attribute of health: according
   to this view, health will not be health before possessing Stability.

   These questions may however be left to the judgement of the individual.

   28. We have already indicated that Activity and Passivity are to be
   regarded as motions, and that it is possible to distinguish absolute
   motions, actions, passions.

   As for the remaining so-called genera, we have shown that they are
   reducible to those which we have posited.

   With regard to the relative, we have maintained that Relation belongs
   to one object as compared with another, that the two objects coexist
   simultaneously, and that Relation is found wherever a substance is in
   such a condition as to produce it; not that the substance is a
   relative, except in so far as it constitutes part of a whole -- a hand,
   for example, or head or cause or principle or element.

   We may also adopt the ancient division of relatives into creative
   principles, measures, excesses and deficiencies, and those which in
   general separate objects on the basis of similarities and differences.
   Our investigation into the kinds of Being is now complete.
     __________________________________________________________________

  FOURTH TRACTATE.

  ON THE INTEGRAL OMNIPRESENCE OF THE
  AUTHENTIC EXISTENT (1).

   1. How are we to explain the omnipresence of the soul? Does it depend
   upon the definite magnitude of the material universe coupled with some
   native tendency in soul to distribute itself over material mass, or is
   it a characteristic of soul apart from body?

   In the latter case, soul will not appear just where body may bring it;
   body will meet soul awaiting it everywhere; wheresoever body finds
   place, there soul lay before ever body was; the entire material mass of
   the universe has been set into an existent soul.

   But if soul spread thus wide before material extension existed, then as
   covering all space it would seem to be of itself a thing of magnitude,
   and in what mode could it exist in the All before the All was in being,
   before there was any All? And who can accept a soul described as
   partless and massless and yet, for all that absence of extension,
   extending over a universe? We may perhaps be told that, though extended
   over the corporeal, it does not itself become so: but thus to give it
   magnitude as an accidental attribute leaves the problem still unsolved:
   precisely the same question must in all reason arise: How can the soul
   take magnitude even in the move of accident?

   We cannot think of soul being diffused as a quality is, say sweetness
   or colour, for while these are actual states of the masses affected so
   that they show that quality at every point, none of them has an
   independent existence; they are attributes of body and known only as in
   body; such quality is necessarily of a definite extension. Further, the
   colour at any point is independent of that at any other; no doubt the
   Form, White, is the same all over, but there is not arithmetical
   identity; in soul there is; it is one soul in foot and in hand, as the
   facts of perception show. And yet in the case of qualities the one is
   observably distributed part for part; in the soul the identity is
   undistributed; what we sometimes call distribution is simply
   omnipresence.

   Obviously, we must take hold of the question from the very beginning in
   the hope of finding some clear and convincing theory as to how soul,
   immaterial and without magnitude, can be thus broad-spread, whether
   before material masses exist or as enveloping them. Of course, should
   it appear that this omnipresence may occur apart from material things,
   there is no difficulty in accepting its occurrence within the material.

   2. Side by side exist the Authentic All and its counterpart, the
   visible universe. The Authentic is contained in nothing, since nothing
   existed before it; of necessity anything coming after it must, as a
   first condition of existence, be contained by this All, especially
   since it depends upon the Authentic and without that could have neither
   stability nor movement.

   We may be reminded that the universe cannot be contained in the
   Authentic as in a place, where place would mean the boundaries of some
   surrounding extension considered as an envelope, or some space formerly
   a part of the Void and still remaining unoccupied even after the
   emergence of the universe, that it can only support itself, as it were,
   upon the Authentic and rest in the embrace of its omnipresence; but
   this objection is merely verbal and will disappear if our meaning is
   grasped; we mention it for another purpose; it goes to enforce our real
   assertion that the Authentic All, at once primal and veritable, needs
   no place and is in no way contained. The All, as being an integral,
   cannot fall short of itself; it must ever have fulfilled its own
   totality, ever reached to its own equivalence; as far as the sum of
   entities extends, there this is; for this is the All.

   Inevitably, also, anything other than this All that may be stationed
   therein must have part in the All, merge into it, and hold by its
   strength; it is not that the thing detaches a portion of the All but
   that within itself it finds the All which has entered into it while
   still unbrokenly self-abiding, since Being cannot lodge in non-Being,
   but, if anything, non-Being within Being.

   Being, then, is present to all Being; an identity cannot tear itself
   asunder; the omnipresence asserted of it must be presence within the
   realm of Being; that is, it must be a self-presence. And it is in no
   way strange that the omnipresence should be at once self-abiding and
   universal; this is merely saying omnipresence within a unity.

   It is our way to limit Being to the sense-known and therefore to think
   of omnipresence in terms of the concrete; in our overestimate of the
   sensible, we question how that other Nature can reach over such
   vastness; but our great is small, and this, small to us, is great; it
   reaches integrally to every point of our universe -- or, better, our
   universe, moving from every side and in all its members towards this,
   meets it everywhere as the omnipresent All ever stretching beyond.

   The universe in all its reach can attain nothing further -- that would
   mean overpassing the total of Being -- and therefore is content to
   circle about it; not able to encompass or even to fill the All, it is
   content to accept place and subordination, for thus it preserves itself
   in neighbouring the higher present to it -- present and yet absent;
   self-holding, whatever may seek its presence.

   Wherever the body of the universe may touch, there it finds this All;
   it strives for no further advance, willing to revolve in that one
   circle, since to it that is the All and in that movement its every part
   embraces the All.

   If that higher were itself in place there would be the need of seeking
   that precise place by a certain right path; part of seeker must touch
   part of sought, and there would be far and near. But since there is no
   far and near there must be, if presence at all, presence entire. And
   presence there indubitably is; this highest is present to every being
   of those that, free of far and near, are of power to receive.

   3. But are we to think of this Authentic Being as, itself, present, or
   does it remain detached, omnipresent in the sense only that powers from
   it enter everywhere?

   Under the theory of presence by powers, souls are described as rays;
   the source remains self-locked and these are flung forth to impinge
   upon particular living things.

   Now, in beings whose unity does not reproduce the entire nature of that
   principle, any presence is presence of an emanant power: even this,
   however, does not mean that the principle is less than integrally
   present; it is not sundered from the power which it has uttered; all is
   offered, but the recipient is able to take only so much. But in Beings
   in which the plenitude of these powers is manifested, there clearly the
   Authentic itself is present, though still as remaining distinct; it is
   distinct in that, becoming the informing principle of some definite
   thing, it would abdicate from its standing as the total and from its
   uttermost self-abiding and would belong, in some mode of accident, to
   another thing as well. Still it is not the property of what may seek to
   join with it; it chooses where it will and enters as the participant's
   power may allow, but it does not become a chattel; it remains the
   quested and so in another sense never passes over. There is nothing
   disquieting in omnipresence after this mode where there is no
   appropriation: in the same accidental way, we may reasonably put it,
   soul concurs with body, but it is soul self-holding, not inbound with
   Matter, free even of the body which it has illuminated through and
   through.

   Nor does the placelessness of Being make it surprising that it be
   present universally to things of place; on the contrary, the wonder
   would be -- the more than wonder, the impossibility -- if from a place
   of its own it were present to other things in their place, or if having
   place it were present at all -- and, especially present, as we assert,
   integrally.

   But set it outside of place, and reason tells us that it will be
   present entire where it is present at all and that, present to the
   total, it must be present in the same completeness to every several
   unity; otherwise something of it is here and something there, and at
   once it is fragmentary, it is body.

   How can we so dispart Being? We cannot break Life into parts; if the
   total was Life, the fragment is not. But we do not thus sunder
   Intelligence, one intelligence in this man, another in that? No; such a
   fragment would not be Intelligence. But the Being of the individual?
   Once more, if the total thing is Being, then a fragment could not be.
   Are we told that in a body, a total of parts, every member is also a
   body? But here we are dividing not body but a particular quantity of
   body, each of those divisions being described as body in virtue of
   possessing the Form or Idea that constitutes body; and this Idea has no
   magnitude, is incapable of magnitude.

   4. But how explain beings by the side of Being, and the variety of
   intelligences and of souls, when Being has the unity of omnipresent
   identity and not merely that of a species, and when intellect and soul
   are likewise numerically one? We certainly distinguish between the soul
   of the All and the particular souls.

   This seems to conflict with our view which, moreover, for all its
   logical necessity, scarcely carries conviction against our mental
   reluctance to the notion of unity identically omnipresent. It would
   appear more plausible to suppose a partition of the All-the original
   remaining undiminished -- or, in a more legitimate phrase, an
   engendering from the All.

   Thus the Authentic would be left self-gathered, while what we think of
   as the parts -- the separate souls -- would come into being to produce
   the multiple total of the universe.

   But if the Authentic Being is to be kept unattached in order to remove
   the difficulty of integral omnipresence, the same considerations must
   apply equally to the souls; we would have to admit that they cannot be
   integrally omnipresent in the bodies they are described as occupying;
   either, soul must be distributed, part to body's part, or it is lodged
   entire at some one point in the body giving forth some of its powers to
   the other points; and these very powers, again, present the same
   difficulty.

   A further objection is that some one spot in the body will hold the
   soul, the others no more than a power from it.

   Still, how account for the many souls, many intelligences, the beings
   by the side of the Being?

   No doubt the beings proceed from the Priors in the mode only of
   numerical distinction and not as concrete masses, but the difficulty
   remains as to how they come to constitute the plenitude of the material
   universe.

   This explanation by progression does not clear the problem.

   We are agreed that diversity within the Authentic depends not upon
   spatial separation but sheerly upon differentiation; all Being, despite
   this plurality, is a unity still; "Being neighbours Being"; all holds
   together; and thus the Intellectual-Principle [which is Being and the
   Beings] remains an integral, multiple by differentiation, not by
   spatial distinction.

   Soul too? Souls too. That principle distributed over material masses we
   hold to be in its own nature incapable of distribution; the magnitude
   belongs to the masses; when this soul-principle enters into them -- or
   rather they into it -- it is thought of as distributable only because,
   within the discrimination of the corporeal, the animating force is to
   be recognised at any and every point. For soul is not articulated,
   section of soul to section of body; there is integral omnipresence
   manifesting the unity of that principle, its veritable partlessness.

   Now as in soul unity does not debar variety, so with Being and the
   Beings; in that order multiplicity does not conflict with unity.
   Multiplicity. This is not due to the need of flooding the universe with
   life; nor is the extension of the corporeal the cause of the
   multiplicity of souls; before body existed, soul was one and many; the
   many souls fore-existed in the All not potentially but each
   effectively; that one collective soul is no bar to the variety; the
   variety does not abrogate the unity; the souls are apart without
   partition, present each to all as never having been set in opposition;
   they are no more hedged off by boundaries than are the multiple items
   of knowledge in one mind; the one soul so exists as to include all
   souls; the nature of such a principle must be utterly free of boundary.

   5. Herein lies its greatness, not in mass; mass is limited and may be
   whittled down to nothingness; in that order no such paring off is
   possible -- nor, if it were, could there be any falling short. Where
   limitation is unthinkable, what fear can there be of absence at any
   point? Nowhere can that principle fail which is the unfailing, the
   everlasting, the undwindling; suppose it in flux and it must at some
   time flow to its end; since it is not in flux -- and, besides [as the
   All], it has nowhere to flow to -- it lies spread over the universe; in
   fact it is the universe, too great to be held by body, giving,
   therefore, to the material universe but little of itself, the little
   which that participant can take.

   We may not make this principle the lesser, or if in the sense of mass
   we do, we must not begin to mistrust the power of that less to stretch
   to the greater. Of course, we have in fact no right to affirm it less
   or to measure the thing of magnitude against that which has none; as
   well talk of a doctor's skill being smaller than his body. This
   greatness is not to be thought of in terms of quantity; the greater and
   less of body have nothing to do with soul.

   The nature of the greatness of soul is indicated by the fact that as
   the body grows, the larger mass is held by the same soul that sufficed
   to the smaller; it would be in many ways absurd to suppose a
   corresponding enlargement in the soul.

   6. But why does not one same soul enter more than one body?

   Because any second body must approach, if it might; but the first has
   approached and received and keeps.

   Are we to think that this second body, in keeping its soul with a like
   care, is keeping the same soul as the first?

   Why not: what difference is there? Merely some additions [from the
   experiences of life, none in the soul itself].

   We ask further why one soul in foot and hand and not one soul in the
   distinct members of the universe.

   Sensations no doubt differ from soul to soul but only as do the
   conditions and experiences; this is difference not in the judging
   principle but in the matters coming to judgement; the judge is one and
   the same soul pronouncing upon various events, and these not its own
   but belonging to a particular body; it is only as a man pronounces
   simultaneously upon a pleasant sensation in his finger and a pain in
   his head.

   But why is not the soul in one man aware, then, of the judgement passed
   by another?

   Because it is a judgement made, not a state set up; besides, the soul
   that has passed the judgement does not pronounce but simply judges:
   similarly a man's sight does not report to his hearing, though both
   have passed judgement; it is the reason above both that reports, and
   this is a principle distinct from either. Often, as it happens, reason
   does become aware of a verdict formed in another reason and takes to
   itself an alien experience: but this has been dealt with elsewhere.

   7. Let us consider once more how it is possible for an identity to
   extend over a universe. This comes to the question how each variously
   placed entity in the multiplicity of the sense order can have its share
   in one identical Principle.

   The solution is in the reasons given for refusing to distribute that
   principle; we are not to parcel it out among the entities of the
   multiple; on the contrary, we bring the distributed multiples to the
   unity. The unity has not gone forth to them: from their dispersion we
   are led to think of it as broken up to meet them, but this is to
   distribute the controller and container equally over the material
   handled.

   A hand may very well control an entire mass, a long plank, or anything
   of that sort; the control is effective throughout and yet is not
   distributed, unit for unit, over the object of control: the power is
   felt to reach over the whole area, though the hand is only hand-long,
   not taking the extension of the mass it wields; lengthen the object
   and, provided that the total is within the strength, the power handles
   the new load with no need of distributing itself over the increased
   area. Now let us eliminate the corporeal mass of the hand, retaining
   the power it exerted: is not that power, the impartible, present
   integrally over the entire area of control?

   Or imagine a small luminous mass serving as centre to a transparent
   sphere, so that the light from within shows upon the entire outer
   surface, otherwise unlit: we surely agree that the inner core of light,
   intact and immobile, reaches over the entire outer extension; the
   single light of that small centre illuminates the whole field. The
   diffused light is not due to any bodily magnitude of that central point
   which illuminates not as body but as body lit, that is by another kind
   of power than corporeal quality: let us then abstract the corporeal
   mass, retaining the light as power: we can no longer speak of the light
   in any particular spot; it is equally diffused within and throughout
   the entire sphere. We can no longer even name the spot it occupied so
   as to say whence it came or how it is present; we can but seek and
   wonder as the search shows us the light simultaneously present at each
   and every point in the sphere. So with the sunlight: looking to the
   corporeal mass you are able to name the source of the light shining
   through all the air, but what you see is one identical light in
   integral omnipresence. Consider too the refraction of light by which it
   is thrown away from the line of incidence; yet, direct or refracted, it
   is one and the same light. And supposing, as before, that the sun were
   simply an unembodied illuminant, the light would no longer be fixed to
   any one definite spot: having no starting point, no centre of origin,
   it would be an integral unity omnipresent.

   8. The light of our world can be allocated because it springs from a
   corporeal mass of known position, but conceive an immaterial entity,
   independent of body as being of earlier nature than all body, a nature
   firmly self-based or, better, without need of base: such a principle,
   incorporeal, autonomous, having no source for its rising, coming from
   no place, attached to no material mass, this cannot be allotted part
   here and part there: that would be to give it both a previous position
   and a present attachment. Finally, anything participating in such a
   principle can participate only as entirety with entirety; there can be
   no allotment and no partition.

   A principle attached to body might be exposed, at least by way of
   accident, to such partition and so be definable as passive and partible
   in view of its close relationship with the body of which it is so to
   speak a state or a Form; but that which is not inbound with body, which
   on the contrary body must seek, will of necessity go utterly free of
   every bodily modification and especially of the very possibility of
   partition which is entirely a phenomenon of body, belonging to its very
   essence. As partibility goes with body, so impartibility with the
   bodiless: what partition is possible where there is no magnitude? If a
   thing of magnitude participates to any degree in what has no magnitude,
   it must be by a participation without division; divisibility implies
   magnitude.

   When we affirm unity in multiplicity, we do not mean that the unity has
   become the multiples; we link the variety in the multiples with the
   unity which we discern, undivided, in them; and the unity must be
   understood as for ever distinct from them, from separate item and from
   total; that unity remains true to itself, remains itself, and so long
   as it remains itself cannot fail within its own scope [and therefore
   does reach over the multiple], yet it is not to be thought of as
   coextensive with the material universe or with any member of the All;
   utterly outside of the quantitative, it cannot be coextensive with
   anything.

   Extension is of body; what is not of body, but of the opposed order,
   must be kept free of extension; but where there is no extension there
   is no spatial distinction, nothing of the here and there which would
   end its freedom of presence. Since, then, partition goes with place --
   each part occupying a place of its own -- how can the placeless be
   parted? The unity must remain self-concentrated, immune from part,
   however much the multiple aspire or attain to contact with it. This
   means that any movement towards it is movement towards its entirety,
   and any participation attained is participation in its entirety. Its
   participants, then, link with it as with something unparticipated,
   something never appropriated: thus only can it remain intact within
   itself and within the multiples in which it is manifested. And if it
   did not remain thus intact, it would cease to be itself; any
   participation, then, would not be in the object of quest but in
   something never quested.

   9. If in such a partition of the unity, that which entered into each
   participant were an entire -- always identical with the first -- then,
   in the progressive severance, the firsts would become numerous, each
   particular becoming a first: and then what prevents these many firsts
   from reconstituting the collective unity? Certainly not the bodies they
   have entered, for those firsts cannot be present in the material masses
   as their Forms if they are to remain identical with the First from
   which they come. On the other hand, taking the part conceived as
   present in the multiple to be simply a power [emanating from the
   First], at once such a part ceases to be the unity; we have then to ask
   how these powers come to be cut off, to have abandoned their origin;
   they certainly have not moved away with no purpose in their movement.

   Again, are those powers, entering the universe of sense, still within
   the First or not?

   If they are not, we have the absurdity that the First has been
   lessened, disempowered, stripped of power originally possessed.
   Besides, how could powers thus cut off subsist apart from the
   foundations of their being? Suppose these powers to be at once within
   the First and elsewhere; then the universe of sense contains either the
   entire powers or parts of them; if parts of powers, the other parts are
   There; if entires, then either the powers There are present here also
   undivided -- and this brings us back to an identity omnipresent in
   integral identity -- or they are each an entire which has taken
   division into a multiplicity of similars so that attached to every
   essence there is one power only -- that particularly appropriated to it
   -- the other powers remaining powers unattached: yet power apart from
   Being is as impossible as Being apart from power; for There power is
   Being or something greater than Being.

   Or, again, suppose the powers coming Thence are other than their source
   -- lesser, fainter, as a bright light dwindles to a dim -- but each
   attached to its essence as a power must always be: such secondary
   powers would be perfectly uniform and at once we are forced to admit
   the omnipresence of the one same power or at the least the presence --
   as in one and the same body -- of some undivided identity integral at
   every point.

   And if this is the case with a particular body, why not with the entire
   universe?

   If we think of the single power as being endlessly divided, it is no
   longer a power entire; partition means lessening of power; and, with
   part of power for part of body, the conditions of consciousness cease.

   Further, a vestigial cut off from its source disappears -- for example,
   a reflected light -- and in general an emanant loses its quality once
   it is severed from the original which it reproduces: just so the powers
   derived from that source must vanish if they do not remain attached to
   it.

   This being so, where these powers appear, their source must be present
   with them; thus, once more, that source must itself be omnipresent as
   an undivided whole.

   10. We may be told that an image need not be thus closely attached to
   its archetype, that we know images holding in the absence of their
   archetype and that a warmed object may retain its heat when the fire is
   withdrawn.

   To begin with the image and archetype: If we are reminded of an
   artist's picture we observe that here the image was produced by the
   artist, not by his subject; even in the case of a self-portrait, the
   picture is no "image of archetype," since it is not produced by the
   painter's body, the original represented: the reproduction is due to
   the effective laying on of the colours.

   Nor is there strictly any such making of image as we see in water or in
   mirrors or in a shadow; in these cases the original is the cause of the
   image which, at once, springs from it and cannot exist apart from it.
   Now, it is in this sense that we are to understand the weaker powers to
   be images of the Priors. As for the illustration from the fire and the
   warmed object, the warmth cannot be called an image of the fire unless
   we think of warmth as containing fire so that the two are separate
   things. Besides, the fire removed, the warmth does sooner or later
   disappear, leaving the object cold.

   If we are told that these powers fade out similarly, we are left with
   only one imperishable: the souls, the Intellectual-Principle, become
   perishable; then since Being [identical with the
   Intellectual-Principle] becomes transitory, so also must the Beings,
   its productions. Yet the sun, so long as it holds its station in the
   universe, will pour the same light upon the same places; to think its
   light may be lessened is to hold its mass perishable. But it has been
   abundantly stated that the emanants of the First are not perishable,
   that the souls, and the Intellectual-Principle with all its content,
   cannot perish.

   11. Still, this integral omnipresence admitted, why do not all things
   participate in the Intellectual Order in its entirety? Why has it a
   first participant, a second, and so on?

   We can but see that presence is determined by the fitness of the
   participant so that, while Being is omnipresent to the realm of Being,
   never falling short of itself, yet only the competent possess
   themselves of that presence which depends not upon situation but upon
   adequacy; the transparent object and the opaque answer very differently
   to the light. These firsts, seconds, thirds, of participance are
   determined by rank, by power, not by place but by differentiation; and
   difference is no bar to coexistence, witness soul and
   Intellectual-Principle: similarly our own knowledge, the trivial next
   the gravest; one and the same object yields colour to our sight,
   fragrance to smell, to every sense a particular experience, all
   presented simultaneously.

   But would not this indicate that the Authentic is diverse, multiple?

   That diversity is simplex still; that multiple is one; for it is a
   Reason-Principle, which is to say a unity in variety: all Being is one;
   the differing being is still included in Being; the differentiation is
   within Being, obviously not within non-Being. Being is bound up with
   the unity which is never apart from it; wheresoever Being appears,
   there appears its unity; and the unity of Being is self-standing, for
   presence in the sensible does not abrogate independence: things of
   sense are present to the Intellectual -- where this occurs -- otherwise
   than as the Intellectual is present within itself; so, too, body's
   presence to soul differs from that of knowledge to soul; one item of
   knowledge is present in a different way than another; a body's presence
   to body is, again, another form of relation.

   12. Think of a sound passing through the air and carrying a word; an
   ear within range catches and comprehends; and the sound and word will
   strike upon any other ear you may imagine within the intervening void,
   upon any that attends; from a great distance many eyes look to the one
   object and all take it fully; all this, because eye and ear exist. In
   the same way, what is apt for soul will possess itself of soul, while
   from the one identical presence another will derive something else.

   Now the sound was diffused throughout the air not in sections but as
   one sound, entire at every point of that space. So with sight: if the
   air carries a shape impressed upon it this is one undivided whole; for,
   wherever there be an eye, there the shape will be grasped; even to such
   as reject this particular theory of sight, the facts of vision still
   stand as an example of participation determined by an identical unity.

   The sound is the clearer illustration: the form conveyed is an entirety
   over all the air space, for unless the spoken word were entire at every
   point, for every ear to catch the whole alike, the same effect could
   not be made upon every listener; the sound, evidently, is not strung
   along the air, section to section. Why, then, need we hesitate to think
   of soul as a thing not extended in broken contact, part for part, but
   omnipresent within the range of its presence, indwelling in totality at
   every point throughout the All?

   Entered into such bodies as are apt to it, the soul is like the spoken
   sound present in the air, before that entry, like the speaker about to
   speak -- though even embodied it remains at once the speaker and the
   silent.

   No doubt these illustrations are imperfect, but they carry a
   serviceable similitude: the soul belongs to that other Kind, and we
   must not conceive a part of it embodied and a part intact; it is at
   once a self-enclosed unity and a principle manifested in diversity.

   Further, any newcoming entity achieving soul receives mysteriously that
   same principle which was equally in the previously ensouled; for it is
   not in the dispensation that a given part of soul situate at some given
   point should enter here and there; what is thought of as entering was
   always a self-enclosed entire and, for all the seeming entry, so
   remains; no real entry is conceivable. If, then, the soul never entered
   and yet is now seen to be present -- present without waiting upon the
   participant -- clearly it is present, here too, without breach of its
   self-inclusion. This can mean only that the participant came to soul;
   it lay outside the veritable reality but advanced towards it and so
   established itself in the kosmos of life. But this kosmos of life is a
   self-gathered entire, not divisible into constituent masses but prior
   to mass; in other words, the participation is of entire in entire. Any
   newcomer into that kosmos of life will participate in it entire.
   Admitting, then, that this kosmos of life is present entire in the
   universe, it must be similarly entire in each several entity; an
   identity numerically one, it must be an undivided entire, omnipresent.

   13. But how account, at this, for its extension over all the heavens
   and all living beings?

   There is no such extension. Sense-perception, by insistence upon which
   we doubt, tells of Here and There; but reason certifies that the Here
   and There do not attach to that principle; the extended has
   participated in that kosmos of life which itself has no extension.

   Clearly no participant can participate in itself; self-participation
   would be merely identity. Body, then, as participant does not
   participate in body; body it has; its participation must be in what is
   not body. So too magnitude does not participate in magnitude; it has
   it: not even in addition of quantity does the initial magnitude
   participate in magnitude: the two cubits do not themselves become three
   cubits; what occurs is that an object totalling to a certain quantity
   now totals to another: for magnitude to participate in magnitude the
   actual two cubits must themselves become the new three [which cannot
   occur].

   If, then, the divided and quantitatively extended is to participate in
   another Kind, is to have any sort of participation, it can participate
   only in something undivided, unextended, wholly outside of quantity.
   Therefore, that which is to be introduced by the participation must
   enter as itself an omnipresent indivisible.

   This indivisibility must, of course, not be taken in any sense of
   littleness: littleness would be still divisible, could not cover the
   extension of the participant and could not maintain integral presence
   against that expansion. Nor is it the indivisibility of a geometric
   point: the participant mass is no single point but includes an infinity
   of points; so that on the theory this principle must be an infinity of
   points, not a simultaneous entire, and so, again, will fail to cover
   the participant.

   If, then, the participant mass in its entirety is to contain that
   principle entire, the universe must hold that one soul present at its
   every point.

   14. But, admitting this one soul at every point, how is there a
   particular soul of the individual and how the good soul and the bad?

   The one soul reaches to the individual but nonetheless contains all
   souls and all intelligences; this, because it is at once a unity and an
   infinity; it holds all its content as one yet with each item distinct,
   though not to the point of separation. Except by thus holding all its
   content as one-life entire, soul entire, all intelligence -- it could
   not be infinite; since the individualities are not fenced off from each
   other, it remains still one thing. It was to hold life not single but
   infinite and yet one life, one in the sense not of an aggregate built
   up but of the retention of the unity in which all rose. Strictly, of
   course, it is a matter not of the rising of the individuals but of
   their being eternally what they are; in that order, as there is no
   beginning, so there is no apportioning except as an interpretation by
   the recipient. What is of that realm is the ancient and primal; the
   relation to it of the thing of process must be that of approach and
   apparent merging with always dependence.

   But we ourselves, what are We?

   Are we that higher or the participant newcomer, the thing of beginnings
   in time?

   Before we had our becoming Here we existed There, men other than now,
   some of us gods: we were pure souls, Intelligence inbound with the
   entire of reality, members of the Intellectual, not fenced off, not cut
   away, integral to that All. Even now, it is true, we are not put apart;
   but upon that primal Man there has intruded another, a man seeking to
   come into being and finding us there, for we were not outside of the
   universe. This other has wound himself about us, foisting himself upon
   the Man that each of us was at first. Then it was as if one voice
   sounded, one word was uttered, and from every side an ear attended and
   received and there was an effective hearing, possessed through and
   through of what was present and active upon it: now we have lost that
   first simplicity; we are become the dual thing, sometimes indeed no
   more than that later foisting, with the primal nature dormant and in a
   sense no longer present.

   15. But how did this intruder find entrance?

   It had a certain aptitude and it grasped at that to which it was apt.
   In its nature it was capable of soul: but what is unfitted to receive
   soul entire -- present entire but not for it -- takes what share it
   may; such are the members of the animal and vegetal order. Similarly,
   of a significant sound, some forms of being take sound and significance
   together, others only the sound, the blank impact.

   A living thing comes into existence containing soul, present to it from
   the Authentic, and by soul is inbound with Reality entire; it possesses
   also a body; but this body is not a husk having no part in soul, not a
   thing that earlier lay away in the soulless; the body had its aptitude
   and by this draws near: now it is not body merely, but living body. By
   this neighboring it is enhanced with some impress of soul -- not in the
   sense of a portion of soul entering into it, but that it is warmed and
   lit by soul entire: at once there is the ground of desire, pleasure,
   pain; the body of the living form that has come to be was certainly no
   unrelated thing.

   The soul, sprung from the divine, lay self-enclosed at peace, true to
   its own quality; but its neighbour, in uproar through weakness,
   instable of its own nature and beaten upon from without, cries, at
   first to itself and afterwards upon the living total, spreading the
   disorder at large. Thus, at an assembly the Elders may sit in tranquil
   meditation, but an unruly populace, crying for food and casting up a
   host of grievances, will bring the whole gathering into ugly turmoil;
   when this sort of people hold their peace so that a word from a man of
   sense may reach them, some passable order is restored and the baser
   part ceases to prevail; otherwise the silence of the better allows the
   rabble to rule, the distracted assembly unable to take the word from
   above.

   This is the evil of state and of council: and this is the evil of man;
   man includes an inner rabble -- pleasures, desires, fears -- and these
   become masters when the man, the manifold, gives them play.

   But one that has reduced his rabble and gone back to the Man he was,
   lives to that and is that Man again, so that what he allows to the body
   is allowed as to something separate.

   There is the man, too, that lives partly in the one allegiance and
   partly in the other; he is a blend of the good that is himself with the
   evil that is alien.

   16. But if that Principle can never fall to evil and we have given a
   true account of the soul's entry or presence to body, what are we to
   say of the periodic Descents and Returns, the punishments, the
   banishment into animal forms? That teaching we have inherited from
   those ancient philosophers who have best probed into soul and we must
   try to show that our own doctrine is accordant with it, or at least not
   conflicting.

   We have seen that the participation of things here in that higher means
   not that the soul has gone outside of itself to enter the corporeal,
   but that the corporeal has approached soul and is now participant in
   it; the coming affirmed by the ancients can be only that approach of
   the body to the higher by which it partakes of life and of soul; this
   has nothing to do with local entry but is some form of communion; by
   the descent and embodiment of current phrasing must be understood not
   that soul becomes an appanage of body but that it gives out to it
   something of itself; similarly, the soul's departure is the complete
   cessation of that communion.

   The various rankings of the universe will determine various degrees of
   the communion; soul, ultimate of the Intellectual, will give forth
   freely to body as being more nearly of the one power and standing
   closer, as distance holds in that order.

   The soul's evil will be this association, its good the release. Why?
   Because, even unmerged, a soul in any way to be described as attached
   to this universe is in some degree fallen from the All into a state of
   partition; essentially belonging to the All, it no longer directs its
   act Thither: thus, a man's knowledge is one whole, but he may guide
   himself by no more than some single item of it, where his good would
   lie in living not by some such fragment but by the total of his
   knowing.

   That One Soul -- member of the Intellectual kosmos and there merging
   what it has of partial into the total -- has broken away, so to speak,
   from the All to the part and to that devotes itself becoming partial
   with it: thus fire that might consume everything may be set to ply its
   all-power upon some trifle. So long as the soul remains utterly
   unattached it is soul not singled out; when it has accepted separation
   -- not that of place but that of act determining individualities -- it
   is a part, no longer the soul entire, or at least not entire in the
   first sense; when, on the contrary, it exercises no such outward
   control it is perfectly the All-Soul, the partial in it latent.

   As for the entry into the World of the Shades, if this means into the
   unseen, that is its release; if into some lower place, there is nothing
   strange in that, since even here the soul is taken to be where the body
   is, in place with the body.

   But on the dissolution of the body?

   So long as the image-soul has not been discarded, clearly the higher
   will be where that is; if, on the contrary, the higher has been
   completely emancipated by philosophic discipline, the image-soul may
   very well go alone to that lower place, the authentic passing
   uncontaminated into the Intellectual, separated from that image but
   nonetheless the soul entire.

   Let the image-offspring of the individuality -- fare as it may, the
   true soul when it turns its light upon itself, chooses the higher and
   by that choice blends into the All, neither acting now nor extinct.

   But it is time to return to our main theme:
     __________________________________________________________________

  FIFTH TRACTATE

  ON THE INTEGRAL OMNIPRESENCE OF THE
  AUTHENTIC EXISTENT (2).

   1. The integral omnipresence of a unity numerically identical is in
   fact universally received; for all men instinctively affirm the god in
   each of us to be one, the same in all. It would be taken as certain if
   no one asked How or sought to bring the conviction to the test of
   reasoning; with this effective in their thought, men would be at rest,
   finding their stay in that oneness and identity, so that nothing would
   wrench them from this unity. This principle, indeed, is the most
   solidly established of all, proclaimed by our very souls; we do not
   piece it up item by item, but find it within beforehand; it precedes
   even the principle by which we affirm unquestionably that all things
   seek their good; for this universal quest of good depends on the fact
   that all aim at unity and possess unity and that universally effort is
   towards unity.

   Now this unity in going forth, so far as it may, towards the Other
   Order must become manifest as multiplicity and in some sense become
   multiple; but the primal nature and the appetition of the good, which
   is appetition of unity, lead back to what is authentically one; to this
   every form of Being is urged in a movement towards its own reality. For
   the good to every nature possessing unity is to be self-belonging, to
   be itself, and that means to be a unity.

   In virtue of that unity the Good may be regarded as truly inherent.
   Hence the Good is not to be sought outside; it could not have fallen
   outside of what is; it cannot possibly be found in non-Being; within
   Being the Good must lie, since it is never a non-Being.

   If that Good has Being and is within the realm of Being, then it is
   present, self-contained, in everything: we, therefore, need not look
   outside of Being; we are in it; yet that Good is not exclusively ours:
   therefore all beings are one.

   2. Now the reasoning faculty which undertakes this problem is not a
   unity but a thing of parts; it brings the bodily nature into the
   enquiry, borrowing its principles from the corporeal: thus it thinks of
   the Essential Existence as corporeal and as a thing of parts; it baulks
   at the unity because it does not start from the appropriate principles.
   We, however, must be careful to bring the appropriately convincing
   principles to the discussion of the Unity, of perfect Being: we must
   hold to the Intellectual principles which alone apply to the
   Intellectual Order and to Real Being.

   On the one hand there is the unstable, exposed to all sorts of change,
   distributed in place, not so much Being as Becoming: on the other,
   there is that which exists eternally, not divided, subject to no change
   of state, neither coming into being nor falling from it, set in no
   region or place or support, emerging from nowhere, entering into
   nothing, fast within itself.

   In dealing with that lower order we would reason from its own nature
   and the characteristics it exhibits; thus, on a plausible foundation,
   we achieve plausible results by a plausible system of deduction:
   similarly, in dealing with the Intellectual, the only way is to grasp
   the nature of the essence concerned and so lay the sure foundations of
   the argument, not forgetfully straying over into that other order but
   basing our treatment on what is essential to the Nature with which we
   deal.

   In every entity the essential nature is the governing principle and, as
   we are told, a sound definition brings to light many even of the
   concomitants: where the essential nature is the entire being, we must
   be all the more careful to keep to that, to look to that, to refer all
   to that.

   3. If this principle is the Authentic Existent and holds unchanging
   identity, does not go forth from itself, is untouched by any process of
   becoming or, as we have said, by any situation in place, then it must
   be always self-gathered, never in separation, not partly here and
   partly there, not giving forth from itself: any such instability would
   set it in thing after thing or at least in something other than itself:
   then it would no longer be self-gathered; nor would it be immune, for
   anything within which it were lodged would affect it; immune, it is not
   in anything. If, then, not standing away from itself, not distributed
   by part, not taking the slightest change, it is to be in many things
   while remaining a self-concentrated entire, there is some way in which
   it has multipresence; it is at once self-enclosed and not so: the only
   way is to recognise that while this principle itself is not lodged in
   anything, all other things participate in it -- all that are apt and in
   the measure of their aptitude.

   Thus, we either cancel all that we have affirmed and the principles
   laid down, and deny the existence of any such Nature, or, that being
   impossible, we return to our first position:

   The One, numerically identical, undistributed, an unbroken entire, yet
   stands remote from nothing that exists by its side; but it does not,
   for that, need to pour itself forth: there is no necessity either that
   certain portions of it enter into things or again that, while it
   remains self-abiding, something produced and projected from it enter at
   various points into that other order. Either would imply something of
   it remaining there while the emanant is elsewhere: thus separated from
   what has gone forth, it would experience local division. And would
   those emanants be, each in itself, whole or part? If part, the One has
   lost its nature, that of an entire, as we have already indicated; if
   whole, then either the whole is broken up to coincide point for point
   with that in which it is become present or we are admitting that an
   unbroken identity can be omnipresent.

   This is a reasoning, surely, founded on the thing itself and its
   essential nature, not introducing anything foreign, anything belonging
   to the Other Order.

   4. Then consider this god [in man] whom we cannot think to be absent at
   some point and present at another. All that have insight into the
   nature of the divine beings hold the omnipresence of this god and of
   all the gods, and reason assures us that so it must be.

   Now all-pervasion is inconsistent with partition; that would mean no
   longer the god throughout but part of the god at one point and part at
   another; the god ceases to be one god, just as a mass cut up ceases to
   be a mass, the parts no longer giving the first total. Further, the god
   becomes corporeal.

   If all this is impossible, the disputed doctrine presents itself again;
   holding the god to pervade the Being of man, we hold the omnipresence
   of an integral identity.

   Again, if we think of the divine nature as infinite -- and certainly it
   is confined by no bounds -- this must mean that it nowhere fails; its
   presence must reach to everything; at the point to which it does not
   reach, there it has failed; something exists in which it is not.

   Now, admitting any sequent to the absolute unity, that sequent must be
   bound up with the absolute; any third will be about that second and
   move towards it, linked to it as its offspring. In this way all
   participants in the Later will have share in the First. The Beings of
   the Intellectual are thus a plurality of firsts and seconds and thirds
   attached like one sphere to one centre, not separated by interval but
   mutually present; where, therefore, the Intellectual tertiaries are
   present, the secondaries and firsts are present too.

   5. Often for the purpose of exposition -- as a help towards stating the
   nature of the produced multiplicity -- we use the example of many lines
   radiating from one centre; but, while we provide for individualization,
   we must carefully preserve mutual presence. Even in the case of our
   circle we need not think of separated radii; all may be taken as
   forming one surface: where there is no distinction even upon the one
   surface but all is power and reality undifferentiated, all the beings
   may be thought of as centres uniting at one central centre: we ignore
   the radial lines and think of their terminals at that centre, where
   they are at one. Restore the radii; once more we have lines, each
   touching a generating centre of its own, but that centre remains
   coincident with the one first centre; the centres all unite in that
   first centre and yet remain what they were, so that they are as many as
   are the lines to which they serve as terminals; the centres themselves
   appear as numerous as the lines starting from gem and yet all those
   centres constitute a unity.

   Thus we may liken the Intellectual Beings in their diversity to many
   centres coinciding with the one centre and themselves at one in it but
   appearing multiple on account of the radial lines -- lines which do not
   generate the centres but merely lead to them. The radii, thus, afford a
   serviceable illustration for the mode of contact by which the
   Intellectual Unity manifests itself as multiple and multipresent.

   6. The Intellectual Beings, thus, are multiple and one; in virtue of
   their infinite nature their unity is a multiplicity, many in one and
   one over many, a unit-plurality. They act as entire upon entire; even
   upon the partial thing they act as entire; but there is the difference
   that at first the partial accepts this working only partially though
   the entire enters later. Thus, when Man enters into human form there
   exists a particular man who, however, is still Man. From the one thing
   Man -- man in the Idea -- material man has come to constitute many
   individual men: the one identical thing is present in multiplicity, in
   multi-impression, so to speak, from the one seal.

   This does not mean that Man Absolute, or any Absolute, or the Universe
   in the sense of a Whole, is absorbed by multiplicity; on the contrary,
   the multiplicity is absorbed by the Absolute, or rather is bound up
   with it. There is a difference between the mode in which a colour may
   be absorbed by a substance entire and that in which the soul of the
   individual is identically present in every part of the body: it is in
   this latter mode that Being is omnipresent.

   7. To Real Being we go back, all that we have and are; to that we
   return as from that we came. Of what is There we have direct knowledge,
   not images or even impressions; and to know without image is to be; by
   our part in true knowledge we are those Beings; we do not need to bring
   them down into ourselves, for we are There among them. Since not only
   ourselves but all other things also are those Beings, we all are they;
   we are they while we are also one with all: therefore we and all things
   are one.

   When we look outside of that on which we depend we ignore our unity;
   looking outward we see many faces; look inward and all is the one head.
   If man could but be turned about by his own motion or by the happy pull
   of Athene -- he would see at once God and himself and the All. At first
   no doubt all will not be seen as one whole, but when we find no stop at
   which to declare a limit to our being we cease to rule ourselves out
   from the total of reality; we reach to the All as a unity -- and this
   not by any stepping forward, but by the fact of being and abiding there
   where the All has its being.

   8. For my part I am satisfied that anyone considering the mode in which
   Matter participates in the Ideas will be ready enough to accept this
   tenet of omnipresence in identity, no longer rejecting it as incredible
   or even difficult. This because it seems reasonable and imperative to
   dismiss any notion of the Ideas lying apart with Matter illumined from
   them as from somewhere above -- a meaningless conception, for what have
   distance and separation to do here?

   This participation cannot be thought of as elusive or very perplexing;
   on the contrary, it is obvious, accessible in many examples.

   Note, however, that when we sometimes speak of the Ideas illuminating
   Matter this is not to suggest the mode in which material light pours
   down on a material object; we use the phrase in the sense only that,
   the material being image while the Ideas are archetypes, the two orders
   are distinguished somewhat in the manner of illuminant and illuminated.
   But it is time to be more exact.

   We do not mean that the Idea, locally separate, shows itself in Matter
   like a reflection in water; the Matter touches the Idea at every point,
   though not in a physical contact, and, by dint of neighbourhood --
   nothing to keep them apart -- is able to absorb thence all that lies
   within its capacity, the Idea itself not penetrating, not approaching,
   the Matter, but remaining self-locked.

   We take it, then, that the Idea, say of Fire -- for we had best deal
   with Matter as underlying the elements -- is not in the Matter. The
   Ideal Fire, then, remaining apart, produces the form of fire throughout
   the entire enfired mass. Now let us suppose -- and the same method will
   apply to all the so-called elements -- that this Fire in its first
   material manifestation is a multiple mass. That single Fire is seen
   producing an image of itself in all the sensible fires; yet it is not
   spatially separate; it does not, then, produce that image in the manner
   of our visible light; for in that case all this sensible fire,
   supposing that it were a whole of parts [as the analogy would
   necessitate], must have generated spatial positions out of itself,
   since the Idea or Form remains in a non-spatial world; for a principle
   thus pluralized must first have departed from its own character in
   order to be present in that many and participate many times in the one
   same Form.

   The Idea, impartible, gives nothing of itself to the Matter; its
   unbreaking unity, however, does not prevent it shaping that multiple by
   its own unity and being present to the entirety of the multiple,
   bringing it to pattern not by acting part upon part but by presence
   entire to the object entire. It would be absurd to introduce a
   multitude of Ideas of Fire, each several fire being shaped by a
   particular idea; the Ideas of fire would be infinite. Besides, how
   would these resultant fires be distinct, when fire is a continuous
   unity? and if we apply yet another fire to certain matter and produce a
   greater fire, then the same Idea must be allowed to have functioned in
   the same way in the new matter as in the old; obviously there is no
   other Idea.

   9. The elements in their totality, as they stand produced, may be
   thought of as one spheric figure; this cannot be the piecemeal product
   of many makers each working from some one point on some one portion.
   There must be one cause; and this must operate as an entire, not by
   part executing part; otherwise we are brought back to a plurality of
   makers. The making must be referred to a partless unity, or, more
   precisely, the making principle must be a partless unity not permeating
   the sphere but holding it as one dependent thing. In this way the
   sphere is enveloped by one identical life in which it is inset; its
   entire content looks to the one life: thus all the souls are one, a
   one, however, which yet is infinite.

   It is in this understanding that the soul has been taken to be a
   numerical principle, while others think of it as in its nature a
   self-increasing number; this latter notion is probably designed to meet
   the consideration that the soul at no point fails but, retaining its
   distinctive character, is ample for all, so much so that were the
   kosmos vaster yet the virtue of soul would still compass it -- or
   rather the kosmos still be sunk in soul entire.

   Of course, we must understand this adding of extension not as a literal
   increase but in the sense that the soul, essentially a unity, becomes
   adequate to omnipresence; its unity sets it outside of quantitative
   measurement, the characteristic of that other order which has but a
   counterfeit unity, an appearance by participation.

   The essential unity is no aggregate to be annulled upon the loss of
   some one of the constituents; nor is it held within any allotted
   limits, for so it would be the less for a set of things, more extensive
   than itself, outside its scope; or it must wrench itself asunder in the
   effort to reach to all; besides, its presence to things would be no
   longer as whole to all but by part to part; in vulgar phrase, it does
   not know where it stands; dismembered, it no longer performs any one
   single function.

   Now if this principle is to be a true unity -- where the unity is of
   the essence -- it must in some way be able to manifest itself as
   including the contrary nature, that of potential multiplicity, while by
   the fact that this multiplicity belongs to it not as from without but
   as from and by itself, it remains authentically one, possessing
   boundlessness and multiplicity within that unity; its nature must be
   such that it can appear as a whole at every point; this, as encircled
   by a single self-embracing Reason-Principle, which holds fast about
   that unity, never breaking with itself but over all the universe
   remaining what it must be.

   The unity is in this way saved from the local division of the things in
   which it appears; and, of course, existing before all that is in place,
   it could never be founded upon anything belonging to that order of
   which, on the contrary, it is the foundation; yet, for all that they
   are based upon it, it does not cease to be wholly self-gathered; if its
   fixed seat were shaken, all the rest would fall with the fall of their
   foundation and stay; nor could it be so unintelligent as to tear itself
   apart by such a movement and, secure within its own being, trust itself
   to the insecurity of place which, precisely, looks to it for safety.

   10. It remains, then, poised in wisdom within itself; it could not
   enter into any other; those others look to it and in their longing find
   it where it is. This is that "Love Waiting at the Door," ever coming up
   from without, striving towards the beautiful, happy when to the utmost
   of its power it attains. Even here the lover does not so much possess
   himself of the beauty he has loved as wait before it; that Beauty is
   abidingly self-enfolded but its lovers, the Many, loving it as an
   entire, possess it as an entire when they attain, for it was an entire
   that they loved. This seclusion does not prevent its sufficing to all,
   but is the very reason for its adequacy; because it is thus entire for
   all it can be The Good to all.

   Similarly wisdom is entire to all; it is one thing; it is not
   distributed parcelwise; it cannot be fixed to place; it is not spread
   about like a colouring, for it is not corporeal; in any true
   participation in wisdom there must be one thing acting as unit upon
   unit. So must it be in our participation in the One; we shall not take
   our several portions of it, nor you some separate entire and I another.
   Think of what happens in Assemblies and all kinds of meetings; the road
   to sense is the road to unity; singly the members are far from wise; as
   they begin to grow together, each, in that true growth, generates
   wisdom while he recognizes it. There is nothing to prevent our
   intelligences meeting at one centre from their several positions; all
   one, they seem apart to us as when without looking we touch one object
   or sound one string with different fingers and think we feel several.
   Or take our souls in their possession of good; it is not one good for
   me and another for you; it is the same for both and not in the sense
   merely of distinct products of an identical source, the good somewhere
   above with something streaming from it into us; in any real receiving
   of good, giver is in contact with taker and gives not as to a recipient
   outside but to one in intimate contact.

   The Intellectual giving is not an act of transmission; even in the case
   of corporeal objects, with their local separation, the mutual giving
   [and taking] is of things of one order and their communication, every
   effect they produce, is upon their like; what is corporeal in the All
   acts and is acted upon within itself, nothing external impinging upon
   it. Now if in body, whose very nature is partition, there is no
   incursion of the alien, how can there be any in the order in which no
   partition exists?

   It is therefore by identification that we see the good and touch it,
   brought to it by becoming identical with what is of the Intellectual
   within ourselves. In that realm exists what is far more truly a kosmos
   of unity; otherwise there will be two sensible universes, divided into
   correspondent parts; the Intellectual sphere, if a unity only as this
   sphere is, will be undistinguishable from it -- except, indeed, that it
   will be less worthy of respect since in the nature of things extension
   is appropriate in the lower while the Intellectual will have wrought
   out its own extension with no motive, in a departure from its very
   character.

   And what is there to hinder this unification? There is no question of
   one member pushing another out as occupying too much space, any more
   than happens in our own minds where we take in the entire fruit of our
   study and observation, all uncrowded.

   We may be told that this unification is not possible in Real Beings; it
   certainly would not be possible, if the Reals had extension.

   11. But how can the unextended reach over the defined extension of the
   corporeal? How can it, so, maintain itself as a unity, an identity?

   This is a problem often raised and reason calls vehemently for a
   solution of the difficulties involved. The fact stands abundantly
   evident, but there is still the need of intellectual satisfaction.

   We have, of course, no slight aid to conviction, indeed the very
   strongest, in the exposition of the character of that principle. It is
   not like a stone, some vast block lying where it lies, covering the
   space of its own extension, held within its own limits, having a fixed
   quantity of mass and of assigned stone-power. It is a First Principle,
   measureless, not bounded within determined size -- such measurement
   belongs to another order -- and therefore it is all-power, nowhere
   under limit. Being so, it is outside of Time.

   Time in its ceaseless onward sliding produces parted interval; Eternity
   stands in identity, pre-eminent, vaster by unending power than Time
   with all the vastness of its seeming progress; Time is like a radial
   line running out apparently to infinity but dependent upon that, its
   centre, which is the pivot of all its movement; as it goes it tells of
   that centre, but the centre itself is the unmoving principle of all the
   movement.

   Time stands, thus, in analogy with the principle which holds fast in
   unchanging identity of essence: but that principle is infinite not only
   in duration but also in power: this infinity of power must also have
   its counterpart, a principle springing from that infinite power and
   dependent upon it; this counterpart will, after its own mode, run a
   course -- corresponding to the course of Time -- in keeping with that
   stationary power which is its greater as being its source: and in this
   too the source is present throughout the full extension of its lower
   correspondent.

   This secondary of Power, participating as far as it may in that higher,
   must be identified.

   Now the higher power is present integrally but, in the weakness of the
   recipient material, is not discerned as every point; it is present as
   an identity everywhere not in the mode of the material triangle --
   identical though, in many representations, numerically multiple, but in
   the mode of the immaterial, ideal triangle which is the source of the
   material figures. If we are asked why the omnipresence of the
   immaterial triangle does not entail that of the material figure, we
   answer that not all Matter enters into the participation necessary;
   Matter accepts various forms and not all Matter is apt for all form;
   the First Matter, for example, does not lend itself to all but is for
   the First Kinds first and for the others in due order, though these,
   too, are omnipresent.

   12. To return: How is that Power present to the universe?

   As a One Life.

   Consider the life in any living thing; it does not reach only to some
   fixed point, unable to permeate the entire being; it is omnipresent. If
   on this again we are asked How, we appeal to the character of this
   power, not subject to quantity but such that though you divide it
   mentally for ever you still have the same power, infinite to the core;
   in it there is no Matter to make it grow less and less according to the
   measured mass.

   Conceive it as a power of an ever-fresh infinity, a principle
   unfailing, inexhaustible, at no point giving out, brimming over with
   its own vitality. If you look to some definite spot and seek to fasten
   on some definite thing, you will not find it. The contrary is your only
   way; you cannot pass on to where it is not; you will never halt at a
   dwindling point where it fails at last and can no longer give; you will
   always be able to move with it -- better, to be in its entirety -- and
   so seek no further; denying it, you have strayed away to something of
   another order and you fall; looking elsewhere you do not see what
   stands there before you.

   But supposing you do thus "seek no further," how do you experience it?

   In that you have entered into the All, no longer content with the part;
   you cease to think of yourself as under limit but, laying all such
   determination aside, you become an All. No doubt you were always that,
   but there has been an addition and by that addition you are diminished;
   for the addition was not from the realm of Being -- you can add nothing
   to Being -- but from non-Being. It is not by some admixture of
   non-Being that one becomes an entire, but by putting non-Being away. By
   the lessening of the alien in you, you increase. Cast it aside and
   there is the All within you; engaged in the alien, you will not find
   the All. Not that it has to come and so be present to you; it is you
   that have turned from it. And turn though you may, you have not severed
   yourself; it is there; you are not in some far region: still there
   before it, you have faced to its contrary.

   It is so with the lesser gods; of many standing in their presence it is
   often one alone that sees them; that one alone was alone in the power
   to see. These are the gods who "in many guises seek our cities"; but
   there is That Other whom the cities seek, and all the earth and heaven,
   everywhere with God and in Him, possessing through Him their Being and
   the Real Beings about them, down to soul and life, all bound to Him and
   so moving to that unity which by its very lack of extension is
   infinite.
     __________________________________________________________________

  SIXTH TRACTATE.

  ON NUMBERS.

   1. It is suggested that multiplicity is a falling away from The Unity,
   infinity being the complete departure, an innumerable multiplicity, and
   that this is why unlimit is an evil and we evil at the stage of
   multiplicity.

   A thing, in fact, becomes a manifold when, unable to remain
   self-centred, it flows outward and by that dissipation takes extension:
   utterly losing unity it becomes a manifold since there is nothing to
   bind part to part; when, with all this outflowing, it becomes something
   definite, there is a magnitude.

   But what is there so grievous in magnitude?

   Given consciousness, there will be, since the thing must feel its
   exile, its sundrance from its essence. Everything seeks not the alien
   but itself; in that outward moving there is frustration or compulsion;
   a thing most exists not when it takes multiplicity or extension but
   when it holds to its own being, that is when its movement is inward.
   Desire towards extension is ignorance of the authentically great, a
   movement not on the appropriate path but towards the strange; to the
   possession of the self the way is inward.

   Consider the thing that has taken extension; broken into so many
   independent items, it is now those several parts and not the thing it
   was; if that original is to persist, the members must stand collected
   to their total; in other words, a thing is itself not by being extended
   but by remaining, in its degree, a unity: through expansion and in the
   measure of the expansion, it is less itself; retaining unity, it
   retains its essential being.

   Yet the universe has at once extension and beauty?

   Yes; because it has not been allowed to slip away into the limitless
   but is held fast by unity; and it has beauty in virtue of Beauty not of
   Magnitude; it needed Beauty to parry that magnitude; in the degree of
   its extension it was void of beauty and to that degree ugly. Thus
   extension serves as Matter to Beauty since what calls for its ordering
   is a multiplicity. The greater the expansion, the greater the disorder
   and ugliness.

   2. What, then, of the "Number of the Infinite"?

   To begin with, how is Number consistent with infinity?

   Objects of sense are not unlimited and therefore the Number applying to
   them cannot be so. Nor is an enumerator able to number to infinity;
   though we double, multiply over and over again, we still end with a
   finite number; though we range over past and future, and consider them,
   even, as a totality, we still end with the finite.

   Are we then to dismiss absolute limitlessness and think merely that
   there is always something beyond?

   No; that more is not in the reckoner's power to produce; the total
   stands already defined.

   In the Intellectual the Beings are determined and with them Number, the
   number corresponding to their total; in this sphere of our own -- as we
   make a man a multiple by counting up his various characteristics, his
   beauty and the rest -- we take each image of Being and form a
   corresponding image of number; we multiply a non-existent in and so
   produce multiple numbers; if we number years we draw on the numbers in
   our own minds and apply them to the years; these numbers are still our
   possession.

   3. And there is the question How can the infinite have existence and
   remain unlimited: whatever is in actual existence is by that very fact
   determined numerically.

   But, first, if multiplicity holds a true place among Beings, how can it
   be an evil?

   As existent it possesses unity; it is a unit-multiple, saved from stark
   multiplicity; but it is of a lessened unity and, by that inwoven
   multiplicity, it is evil in comparison with unity pure. No longer
   steadfast in that nature, but fallen, it is the less, while in virtue
   of the unity thence retained it keeps some value; multiplicity has
   value in so far as it tends to return to, unity.

   But how explain the unlimited? It would seem that either it is among
   beings and so is limited or, if unlimited, is not among beings but, at
   best, among things of process such as Time. To be brought to limit it
   must be unlimited; not the limited but the unlimited is the subject of
   limitation, since between the limited and the unlimited there is no
   intermediate to accept the principle of limitation. The unlimited
   recoils by very nature from the Idea of limit, though it may be caught
   and held by it from without: -- the recoil, of course, is not from one
   place to another; the limitless can have nothing to do with place which
   arises only with the limiting of the unlimited. Hence what is known as
   the flux of the unlimited is not to be understood as local change; nor
   does any other sort of recognisable motion belong to it in itself;
   therefore the limitless cannot move: neither can it be at rest: in
   what, since all place is later? Its movement means little more than
   that it is not fixed in rest.

   Is it, then, suspended at some one point, or rocking to and fro?

   No; any such poising, with or without side motion, could be known only
   by place [which Matter precedes].

   How, then, are we to form any conception of its being?

   We must fasten on the bare notion and take what that gives us --
   opposites that still are not opposed: we think of large and small and
   the unlimited becomes either, of stationary and moving, and it will be
   either of these. But primarily it can be neither in any defined degree,
   or at once it is under limit. Limitless in this unlimited and undefined
   way, it is able to appear as either of a pair of opposites: draw near,
   taking care to throw no net of limit over it, and you have something
   that slips away; you come upon no unity for so it would be defined;
   approach the thing as a unit, and you find it manifold; call it a
   manifold, and again you falsify, for when the single thing is not a
   unity neither is the total a manifold. In one manifestation it takes
   the appearance of movement, in another of rest, as the mind envisages
   it.

   And there is movement in its lack of consciousness; it has passed out
   of Intellectual-Principle, slid away. That it cannot break free but is
   under compulsion from without to keep to its circling with no
   possibility of advance, in this would be its rest. Thus it is not true
   to speak of Matter as being solely in flux.

   4. We have to enquire into the existence of the Numbers in the
   Intellectual. Are they Ideas added to the other Ideas? Or are they no
   more than necessary concomitants to the Ideas?

   In the latter case, Being, as the first [in the Intellectual] would
   give us the conception of the Monad; then since Being produces motion
   and rest, Three exists; and so on for all the other members of the
   realm of Being. Or perhaps there is one monad for each member, or a
   monad for the first, with a dyad for its next, since there exists a
   series, and a corresponding number for every successive total, decad
   for ten, and so on.

   If, on the contrary, Number is a direct production of the
   Intellectual-Principle [an Idea in itself], there is the question
   whether it preceded or followed the other Ideas.

   Plato, where he says that men arrived at the conception of Number by
   way of the changes of day and night -- thus making the concept depend
   upon variation among things -- seems to hold that the things numerable
   precede and by their differences produce number: Number then would
   consist in a process within the human mind passing onwards from thing
   to thing; it results by the fact that the mind takes count, that is
   when the mind traverses things and reports their differences; observing
   pure identity unbroken by difference, it says One. But there is the
   passage where he tells us that the veritable Number has Being, is a
   Being; this is the opposed view that Number is no product of the
   reckoning mind but a reality in itself, the concept of which is
   reawakened in the mind by changes in things of sense.

   5. What then is the veritable nature of Number?

   Is it an accompaniment upon each substance, something seen in the
   things as in a man we see one man, in a being one being and in the
   total of presentations the total of number?

   But how explain the dyad and triad? How comes the total to be unitary
   and any particular number to be brought under unity? The theory offers
   a multiplicity of units, and no number is reducible to unity but the
   simple "one." It might be suggested that a dyad is that thing -- or
   rather what is observed upon that thing -- which has two powers
   combined, a compound thing related to a unity: or numbers might be what
   the Pythagoreans seem to hold them in their symbolic system in which
   Justice, for example, is a Tetrad: but this is rather to add the
   number, a number of manifold unity like the decad, to the multiplicity
   of the thing which yet is one thing. Now it is not so that we treat the
   ten things; we bring them together and apply the figure ten to the
   several items. Or rather in that case we say ten, but when the several
   items form a unity we say decad. This would apply in the Intellectual
   as in the sensible.

   But how then can number, observed upon things, rank among Real Beings?

   One answer might be that whiteness is similarly observed upon things
   and yet is real, just as movement is observed upon things and there is
   still a real existence of movement. But movement is not on a par with
   number: it is because movement is an entity that unity can be observed
   upon it. Besides, the kind of real existence thus implied annuls the
   reality of number, making it no more than an attribute; but that cannot
   be since an attribute must exist before it can be attributed; it may be
   inseparable from the subject but still must in itself be something,
   some entity as whiteness is; to be a predicate it must be that which is
   to be predicated. Thus if unity is observed in every subject, and "one
   man" says more than "man's oneness being different from the manness and
   common to all things -- then this oneness must be something prior to
   man and to all the rest: only so can the unity come to apply to each
   and to all: it must therefore be prior also to even movement, prior to
   Being, since without unity these could not be each one thing: of course
   what is here meant is not the unity postulated as transcending Being
   but the unity predicable of the Ideas which constitute each several
   thing. So too there is a decad prior to the subject in which we affirm
   it; this prior would be the decad absolute, for certainly the thing in
   which the decad is observed is not that absolute.

   Is this unity, then, connate and coexistent to the Beings? Suppose it
   coexistent merely as an accidental, like health in man, it still must
   exist of itself; suppose it present as an element in a compound, there
   must first exist unity and the unity absolute that can thus enter into
   composition; moreover if it were compounded with an object brought into
   being by its agency it would make that object only spuriously a unity;
   its entry would produce a duality.

   But what of the decad? Where lies the need of decad to a thing which,
   by totalling to that power, is decad already?

   The need may be like that of Form to Matter; ten and decad may exist by
   its virtue; and, once more, the decad must previously exist of its own
   existence, decad unattached.

   6. Granted, then, that there exist, apart from things, a unity absolute
   and a decad absolute in other words, that the Intellectual beings,
   together with their characteristic essence have also their order,
   Henads, Dyads, Triads, what is the nature of these numerical entities
   and how does it come into being? We cannot but think that some reason
   accounts for their origin.

   As a beginning, what is the origin of the Ideas in general? It is not
   that the thinking principle thought of each Idea and by that act of
   thought procured their several existences; not because Justice and
   Movement were thus thought did they come to be; that would imply that
   while the thought is later than the thing -- the concept of Justice
   must be later than Justice itself -- yet the thought precedes what, as
   founded on the thinking, owes its existence to it. Besides, if justice
   is only a certain definite thought we have the absurdity that Justice
   is nothing more than a definition of Justice. Thinking of Justice or
   Movement is but grasping their nature; this would mean grasping the
   non-existent, an impossibility.

   We may be reminded that in immaterial objects the knowledge is
   identical with the thing; but we must not misapply that statement; it
   does not say that the knowledge is the thing known, or that the reason
   surveying the thing is the thing, but that the immaterial thing, being
   an Intellectual object is also a thought; this does not imply a
   definition or conception of the object; the thing itself, as belonging
   to the Intellectual, can be nothing else than Intellect or knowledge.
   This is not a case of knowledge self-directed; it is that the thing in
   the Intellectual transmutes the knowledge, which is not fixed like the
   knowledge of material things; in other words it makes it true
   knowledge, that is to say no image of the thing but the thing directly.

   Thus it is not the conception of movement that brings movement to be;
   movement absolute produces that conception; it produces itself as at
   once movement and the concept of movement, for movement as it exists
   There, bound up with Being, is a concept. It is movement absolute
   because it is the first movement -- there can be none till this exist
   -- and it is the authentic Movement since it is not accidental to
   something else but is the activity of actual Being in motion. Thus it
   is a real existent, though the notion of Being is different.

   Justice therefore is not the thought of Justice but, as we may put it,
   a state of the Intellectual-Principle, or rather an activity of it --
   an appearance so lovely that neither evening nor dawn is so fair, nor
   anything else in all the realm of sense, an Intellectual manifestation
   self-rising, self-seen, or, rather, self-being.

   7. It is inevitably necessary to think of all as contained within one
   nature; one nature must hold and encompass all; there cannot be as in
   the realm of sense thing apart from thing, here a sun and elsewhere
   something else; all must be mutually present within a unity. This is
   the very nature of the Intellectual-Principle as we may know from soul
   which reproduces it and from what we call Nature under which and by
   which the things of process are brought into their disjointed being
   while that Nature itself remains indissolubly one.

   But within the unity There, the several entities have each its own
   distinct existence; the all-embracing Intellect sees what is in it,
   what is within Being; it need not look out upon them since it contains
   them, need not separate them since they stand for ever distinct within
   it.

   Against doubters we cite the fact of participation; the greatness and
   beauty of the Intellectual-Principle we know by the soul's longing
   towards it; the longing of the rest towards soul is set up by its
   likeness to its higher and to the possibility open to them of attaining
   resemblance through it.

   It is surely inconceivable that any living thing be beautiful failing a
   Life-Absolute of a wonderful, an ineffable, beauty: this must be the
   Collective Life, made up of all living things, or embracing all,
   forming a unity coextensive with all, as our universe is a unity
   embracing all the visible.

   8. As then there is a Life-Form primal -- which therefore is the
   Life-Form Absolute -- and there is Intellectual-Principle or Being,
   Authentic Being, these, we affirm, contain all living things and all
   Number, and Absolute Justice and Beauty and all of that order; for we
   ascribe an existence of their own to Absolute Man, Absolute Number,
   Absolute Justice. It remains to discover, in so far as such knowledge
   is possible, how these distinct entities come to be and what is the
   manner of their being.

   At the outset we must lay aside all sense-perception; by
   Intellectual-Principle we know Intellectual-Principle. We reflect
   within ourselves there is life, there is intellect, not in extension
   but as power without magnitude, issue of Authentic Being which is power
   self-existing, no vacuity but a thing most living and intellective --
   nothing more living, more intelligent, more real -- and producing its
   effect by contact and in the ratio of the contact, closely to the
   close, more remotely to the remote. If Being is to be sought, then most
   be sought is Being at its intensest; so too the intensest of Intellect
   if the Intellectual act has worth; and so, too, of Life.

   First, then, we take Being as first in order; then
   Intellectual-Principle; then the Living-Form considered as containing
   all things: Intellectual-Principle, as the Act of Real Being, is a
   second.

   Thus it is clear that Number cannot be dependent upon the Living-Form
   since unity and duality existed before that; nor does it rise in the
   Intellectual-Principle since before that there existed Real Being which
   is both one and numerous.

   9. It remains then to consider whether Being by its distinction
   produced Number or Number produced that distinction. It is certain that
   either Number was the cause of Being, movement, rest, identity and
   difference, or these the cause of Number.

   The first question is whether Number can exist in and of itself or is
   dependent upon things -- Two being something observed in two things,
   Three in three; and so of the arithmetical One, for if this could exist
   apart from numbered objects it could exist also before the divisions of
   Being.

   But could it precede Being itself?

   For the present we must take it that Being precedes Number, is its
   source. But if One means one being and the duality two beings, then
   unity precedes Being, and Number precedes the Beings.

   Mentally, to our approach? Yes: and in reality of existence as well.

   Let us consider: When we think of the existence and the fine appearance
   of a man as forming one thing, that unity is certainly thought of as
   subsequent to a precedent duality; when we group a horse with a dog,
   the duality is obviously the subsequent. But think of that which brings
   man or horse or dog into being or produces them, with full intention,
   from where they lie latent within itself: the producer must say "I
   begin with a first, I pass on to a second; that makes two; counting
   myself there are three." Of course there was no such numbering even of
   Beings for their production, since the due number was known from the
   very beginning; but this consideration serves to show that all Number
   precedes the very Beings themselves.

   But if Number thus preceded the Beings, then it is not included among
   them?

   The truth is that it existed within the Authentic Being but not as
   applying to it, for Being was still unparted; the potentiality of
   Number existed and so produced the division within Being, put in
   travail with multiplicity; Number must be either the substance of Being
   or its Activity; the Life-Form as such and the Intellectual-Principle
   must be Number. Clearly Being is to be, thought of as Number
   Collective, while the Beings are Number unfolded: the
   Intellectual-Principle is Number moving within itself, while the
   Living-Form is Number container of the universe. Even Being is the
   outcome of the Unity, and, since the prior is unity, the secondary must
   be Number.

   Hence it is that the Forms have been described as Henads and Numbers.
   This is the authentic Number; the other, the "monadic" is its image.
   The Authentic is that made manifest in the Forms and helping to bring
   them to be; primally it is the Number in the Authentic Being, inherent
   to it and preceding the Beings, serving to them as root, fount, first
   principle.

   For the Unity is source to Being; Being's Being is stayed upon the
   Unity as its safeguard from dissolution; the Unity cannot rest upon
   Being which at that would be a unity before possessing unity; and so
   with the decad before possessing decadhood.

   10. When it takes lot with multiplicity, Being becomes Number by the
   fact of awakening to manifoldness; -- before, it was a preparation, so
   to speak, of the Beings, their fore-promise, a total of henads offering
   a stay for what was to be based upon them.

   Here with us a man will say "I wish I had such and such a quantity of
   gold" -- or "such and such a number of houses." Gold is one thing: the
   wish is not to bring the numerical quantity into gold but to bring the
   gold to quantity; the quantity, already present in the mind, is to be
   passed on to the gold so that it acquire that numerical value.

   If the Beings preceded the number and this were discerned upon them at
   the stirring, to such and such a total, of the numbering principle,
   then the actual number of the Beings would be a chance not a choice;
   since that total is not a matter of chance, Number is a causing
   principle preceding that determined total.

   Number then pre-exists and is the cause by which produced things
   participate in quantity.

   The single thing derives its unity by participation in Unity-Absolute;
   its being it derives from Being-Absolute, which holds its Being from
   itself alone; a unity is a unity in virtue of Being; the particular
   unity -- where the unity is a multiple unity -- is one thing only as
   the Triad is; the collective Being is a unity of this kind, the unity
   not of the monad but of the myriad or any such collective number.

   Take a man affirming the presence of ten thousand things; it is he that
   produces the number; he does not tell us that the ten thousand have
   uttered it; they merely exhibit their several forms; the enumerator's
   mind supplies the total which would never be known if the mind kept
   still.

   How does the mind pronounce?

   By being able to enumerate; that is by knowing Number: but in order to
   this, Number must be in existence, and that that Principle should not
   know its own total content is absurd, impossible.

   It is with Number as with Good. When we pronounce things to be good
   either we mean that they are in their own nature so or we affirm
   goodness as an accidental in them. Dealing with the primals, the
   goodness we have in mind is that First Hypostasis; where the goodness
   is an accidental we imply the existence of a Principle of Good as a
   necessary condition of the accidental presence; there must be some
   source of that good which is observed elsewhere, whether this source be
   an Absolute Good or something that of its own nature produces the good.
   Similarly with number; in attributing the decad to things we affirm
   either the truly existent decad or, where the decadhood is accidental,
   we necessarily posit the self-subsistent decad, decad not associated;
   if things are to be described as forming a decad, then either they must
   be of themselves the decad or be preceded by that which has no other
   being than that of decadhood.

   It must be urged as a general truth that anything affirmed of a subject
   not itself either found its way in from outside or is the
   characteristic Act of that subject; and supposing the predicated
   attribute to show no variation of presence and absence but to be always
   present, then, if the subject is a Real Being so also is the accidental
   in an equal degree; or, failing Real Being, it at least belongs to the
   existents, it exists. In the case when the subject can be thought of as
   remaining without its Act, yet that Act is inbound with it even though
   to our minds it appears as a later; when on the contrary the subject
   cannot be conceived without the attribute-man, for example, without
   unity -- then the attribute is either not later but concomitant or,
   being essential to the existence, is precedent. In our view, Unity and
   Number are precedent.

   11. It may be suggested that the decad is nothing more than so many
   henads; admitting the one henad why should we reject the ten? As the
   one is a real existence why not the rest? We are certainly not
   compelled to attach that one henad to some one thing and so deprive all
   the rest of the means to unity: since every existent must be one thing,
   the unity is obviously common to all. This means one principle applying
   to many, the principle whose existence within itself we affirmed to be
   presupposed by its manifestation outside.

   But if a henad exists in some given object and further is observed in
   something else, then that first henad being real, there cannot be only
   one henad in existence; there must be a multiplicity of henads.

   Supposing that first henad alone to exist, it must obviously be lodged
   either in the thing of completest Being or at all events in the thing
   most completely a unity. If in the thing of completest Being, then the
   other henads are but nominal and cannot be ranked with the first henad,
   or else Number becomes a collection of unlike monads and there are
   differences among monads [an impossibility]. If that first henad is to
   be taken as lodged in the thing of completest unity, there is the
   question why that most perfect unity should require the first henad to
   give it unity.

   Since all this is impossible, then, before any particular can be
   thought of as a unit, there must exist a unity bare, unrelated by very
   essence. If in that realm also there must be a unity apart from
   anything that can be called one thing, why should there not exist
   another unity as well?

   Each particular, considered in itself, would be a manifold of monads,
   totalling to a collective unity. If however Nature produces
   continuously -- or rather has produced once for all -- not halting at
   the first production but bringing a sort of continuous unity into
   being, then it produces the minor numbers by the sheer fact of setting
   an early limit to its advance: outgoing to a greater extent -- not in
   the sense of moving from point to point but in its inner changes -- it
   would produce the larger numbers; to each number so emerging it would
   attach the due quantities and the appropriate thing, knowing that
   without this adaptation to Number the thing could not exist or would be
   a stray, something outside, at once, of both Number and Reason.

   12. We may be told that unity and monad have no real existence, that
   the only unity is some definite object that is one thing, so that all
   comes to an attitude of the mind towards things considered singly.

   But, to begin with, why at this should not the affirmation of Being
   pass equally as an attitude of mind so that Being too must disappear?
   No doubt Being strikes and stings and gives the impression of reality;
   but we find ourselves just as vividly struck and impressed in the
   presence of unity. Besides, is this attitude, this concept itself, a
   unity or a manifold? When we deny the unity of an object, clearly the
   unity mentioned is not supplied by the object, since we are saying it
   has none; the unity therefore is within ourselves, something latent in
   our minds independently of any concrete one thing.

   [An objector speaks-] "But the unity we thus possess comes by our
   acceptance of a certain idea or impression from things external; it is
   a notion derived from an object. Those that take the notion of numbers
   and of unity to be but one species of the notions held to be inherent
   in the mind must allow to numbers and to unity the reality they ascribe
   to any of the others, and upon occasion they must be met; but no such
   real existence can be posited when the concept is taken to be an
   attitude or notion rising in us as a by-product of the objects; this
   happens when we say "This," "What," and still more obviously in the
   affirmations "Crowd," "Festival," "Army," "Multiplicity." As
   multiplicity is nothing apart from certain constituent items and the
   festival nothing apart from the people gathered happily at the rites,
   so when we affirm unity we are not thinking of some Oneness
   self-standing, unrelated. And there are many other such cases; for
   instance "on the right," "Above" and their opposites; what is there of
   reality about this "On-the-right-ness" but the fact that two different
   positions are occupied? So with "Above": "Above" and "Below" are a mere
   matter of position and have no significance outside of this sphere.

   Now in answer to this series of objections our first remark is that
   there does exist an actuality implicit in each one of the relations
   cited; though this is not the same for all or the same for correlatives
   or the same for every reference to unity.

   But these objections must be taken singly.

   13. It cannot reasonably be thought that the notion of unity is derived
   from the object since this is physical -- man, animal, even stone, a
   presentation of that order is something very different from unity
   [which must be a thing of the Intellectual]; if that presentation were
   unity, the mind could never affirm unity unless of that given thing,
   man, for example.

   Then again, just as in the case of "On the right" or other such
   affirmation of relation, the mind does not affirm in some caprice but
   from observation of contrasted position, so here it affirms unity in
   virtue of perceiving something real; assuredly the assertion of unity
   is not a bare attitude towards something non-existent. It is not enough
   that a thing be alone and be itself and not something else: and that
   very "something else" tells of another unity. Besides Otherness and
   Difference are later; unless the mind has first rested upon unity it
   cannot affirm Otherness or Difference; when it affirms Aloneness it
   affirms unity-with-aloneness; thus unity is presupposed in Aloneness.

   Besides, that in us which asserts unity of some object is first a
   unity, itself; and the object is a unity before any outside affirmation
   or conception.

   A thing must be either one thing or more than one, manifold: and if
   there is to be a manifold there must be a precedent unity. To talk of a
   manifold is to talk of what has something added to unity; to think of
   an army is to think of a multitude under arms and brought to unity. In
   refusing to allow the manifold to remain manifold, the mind makes the
   truth clear; it draws a separate many into one, either supplying a
   unity not present or keen to perceive the unity brought about by the
   ordering of the parts; in an army, even, the unity is not a fiction but
   as real as that of a building erected from many stones, though of
   course the unity of the house is more compact.

   If, then, unity is more pronounced in the continuous, and more again
   where there is no separation by part, this is clearly because there
   exists, in real existence, something which is a Nature or Principle of
   Unity. There cannot be a greater and less in the non-existent: as we
   predicate Substance of everything in sense, but predicate it also of
   the Intellectual order and more strictly there -- since we hold that
   the greater and more sovereign substantiality belongs to the Real
   Beings and that Being is more marked in Substance, even sensible
   Substance, than in the other Kinds -- so, finding unity to exhibit
   degree of more and less, differing in sense-things as well as in the
   Intellectual, we must similarly admit that Unity exists under all forms
   though still by reference, only, to that primal Unity.

   As Substance and Real Being, despite the participation of the sensible,
   are still of the Intellectual and not the sensible order, so too the
   unity observed present in things of sense by participation remains
   still an Intellectual and to be grasped by an Intellectual Act. The
   mind, from a thing present to it, comes to knowledge of something else,
   a thing not presented; that is, it has a prior knowledge. By this prior
   knowledge it recognises Being in a particular being; similarly when a
   thing is one it can affirm unity as it can affirm also duality and
   multiplicity.

   It is impossible to name or conceive anything not making one or two or
   some number; equally impossible that the thing should not exist without
   which nothing can possibly be named or conceived; impossible to deny
   the reality of that whose existence is a necessary condition of naming
   or affirming anything; what is a first need, universally, to the
   formation of every concept and every proposition must exist before
   reasoning and thinking; only as an existent can it be cited to account
   for the stirring of thought. If Unity is necessary to the substantial
   existence of all that really is -- and nothing exists which is not one
   -- Unity must precede Reality and be its author. It is therefore, an
   existent Unity, not an existent that develops Unity; considered as
   Being-with-Unity it would be a manifold, whereas in the pure Unity
   there is no Being save in so far as Unity attends to producing it. As
   regards the word "This," it is nat a bare word; it affirms an indicated
   existence without using the name, it tells of a certain presence,
   whether a substance or some other existent; any This must be
   significant; it is no attitude of the mind applying itself to a
   non-existent; the This shows a thing present, as much as if we used the
   strict name of the object.

   14. To the argument touching relation we have an answer surely
   legitimate:

   The Unity is not of a nature to lose its own manner of being only
   because something else stands in a state which it does not itself
   share; to stray from its unity it must itself suffer division into
   duality or the still wider plurality.

   If by division the one identical mass can become a duality without loss
   of quantity, clearly the unity it possessed and by this destructive
   division lost was something distinct. What may be alternatively present
   and absent to the same subject must be classed among Real-Beings,
   regardless of position; an accidental elsewhere, it must have reality
   in itself whether it be manifested in things of sense or in the
   Intellectual -- an accidental in the Laters but self-existent in the
   higher, especially in the First in its aspect of Unity developing into
   Being. We may be told that Unity may lose that character without change
   in itself, becoming duality by association with something else; but
   this is not true; unity does not become two things; neither the added
   nor what takes the addition becomes two; each remains the one thing it
   was; the duality is predicable of the group only, the unity remaining
   unchanged in each of those unchanged constituents.

   Two and the Dyad are not essentially relative: if the only condition to
   the construction of duality were meeting and association such a
   relation might perhaps constitute Twoness and Duality; but in fact we
   see Duality produced by the very opposite process, by the splitting
   apart of a unity. This shows that duality -- or any other such
   numerical form -- is no relation produced either by scission or
   association. If one configuration produces a certain thing it is
   impossible that the opposite should produce the same so that the thing
   may be identified with the relation.

   What then is the actual cause?

   Unity is due to the presence of Unity; duality to that of Duality; it
   is precisely as things are white by Whiteness, just by Justice,
   beautiful by Beauty. Otherwise we must reject these universals and call
   in relation here also: justice would arise from a certain attitude in a
   given situation, Beauty from a certain pattern of the person with
   nothing present able to produce the beauty, nothing coming from without
   to effect that agreeable appearance.

   You see something which you pronounce to be a unity; that thing
   possesses also size, form, and a host of other characteristics you
   might name; size, bulk, sweetness, bitterness and other Ideas are
   actually present in the thing; it surely cannot be thought that, while
   every conceivable quality has Real-Being, quantity [Number] has not and
   that while continuous quantity exists, discrete quantity does not and
   this though continuous quantity is measured by the discrete. No: as
   size by the presence of Magnitude, and Oneness by the presence of
   Unity, so with Duality and all the other numerical modes.

   As to the How of participation, the enquiry is that of all
   participation in Ideal Forms; we must note, however, that the presence
   of the Decad in the looser totals is different from its presence in the
   continuous; there is difference again in its presence within many
   powers where multiplicity is concentred in unity; arrived at the
   Intellectuals, there too we discover Number, the Authentic Number, no
   longer entering the alien, Decad-Absolute not Decad of some particular
   Intellectual group.

   15. We must repeat: The Collective Being, the Authentic, There, is at
   once Being and Intellectual-Principle and the Complete Living Form;
   thus it includes the total of living things; the Unity There is
   reproduced by the unity of this living universe in the degree possible
   to it -- for the sense-nature as such cannot compass that
   transcendental unity -- thus that Living-All is inevitably
   Number-Entire: if the Number were not complete, the All would be
   deficient to the extent of some number, and if every number applicable
   to living things were not contained in it, it would not be the
   all-comprehending Life-Form. Therefore, Number exists before every
   living thing, before the collective Life-Form.

   Again: Man exists in the Intellectual and with him all other living
   things, both by possession of Real-Being and because that is the
   Life-Form Complete. Even the man of this sphere is a member of the
   Intellectual since that is the Life-Form Complete; every living thing
   by virtue of having life, is There, There in the Life-form, and man is
   There also, in the Intellectual, in so far as he is intellect, for all
   intelligences are severally members of That. Now all this means Number
   There. Yet even in Intellect Number is not present primally; its
   presence There is the reckoning of the Acts of Intellectual-Principle;
   it tallies with the justice in Intellectual-Principle, its moral
   wisdom, its virtues, its knowledge, all whose possession makes That
   Principle what it is.

   But knowledge -- must not this imply presence to the alien? No;
   knowledge, known and knower are an identity; so with all the rest;
   every member of Intellectual-Principle is therefore present to it
   primally; justice, for example, is not accidental to it as to soul in
   its character as soul, where these virtues are mainly potential
   becoming actual by the intention towards Intellectual-Principle and
   association with it.

   Next we come to Being, fully realized, and this is the seat of Number;
   by Number, Being brings forth the Beings; its movement is planned to
   Number; it establishes the numbers of its offspring before bringing
   them to be, in the same way as it establishes its own unity by linking
   pure Being to the First: the numbers do not link the lower to the
   First; it suffices that Being is so linked; for Being, in taking form
   as Number, binds its members to itself. As a unity, it suffers no
   division, remaining self-constant; as a thing of division, containing
   its chosen total of members, it knows that total and so brings forth
   Number, a phase therefore of its content: its development of part is
   ruled by the powers of Number, and the Beings it produces sum to that
   Number. Thus Number, the primal and true, is Principle and source of
   actuality to the Beings.

   Hence it is that in our sphere, also, Number accompanies the coming to
   be of particular things and to suppose another number than the actual
   is to suppose the production of something else or of nothing.

   These then are the primal numbers; they are numerable; the numbers of
   the other order are of a double character; as derived from the first
   numbers they are themselves numerable but as acting for those first
   they are measures of the rest of things, numbering numbers and
   numerables. For how could they declare a Decad save in the light of
   numbers within themselves?

   16. But here we may be questioned about these numbers which we describe
   as the primal and authentic:

   "Where do you place these numbers, in what genus among Beings? To
   everyone they seem to come under Quantity and you have certainly
   brought Quantity in, where you say that discrete Quantity equally with
   the continuous holds place among Beings; but you go on to say that
   there are the numbers belonging to the Firsts and then talk of other
   numbers quite distinct, those of reckoning; tell us how you arrange all
   this, for there is difficulty here. And then, the unity in sense-things
   -- is that a quantity or is quantity here just so many units brought
   together, the unity being the starting-point of quantity but not
   quantity itself? And, if the starting-point, is it a kindred thing or
   of another genus? All this you owe it to us to make clear."

   Be it so; we begin by pointing out a distinction:

   You take one thing with another -- for we must first deal with objects
   of sense -- a dog and a man, or two men; or you take a group and affirm
   ten, a decad of men: in this case the number affirmed is not a Reality,
   even as Reality goes in the sphere of sense, but is purely Quantity:
   similarly when you resolve into units, breaking up the decad, those
   units are your principle of Quantity since the single individual is not
   a unity absolute.

   But the case is different when you consider one man in himself and
   affirm a certain number, duality, for example, in that he is at once
   living and reasoning.

   By this analysis and totalling, you get quantity; but there are two
   objects under consideration and each of these is one; each of the
   unities contributes to the complete being and the oneness is inherent
   in each; this is another kind of number; number essential; even the
   duality so formed is no posterior; it does not signify a quantity apart
   from the thing but the quantity in the essence which holds the thing
   together. The number here is no mere result of your detailing; the
   things exist of themselves and are not brought together by your
   reckoning, but what has it to do with essential reality that you count
   one man in with another? There is here no resultant unity such as that
   of a choir -- the decad is real only to you who count the ten; in the
   ten of your reckoning there cannot be a decad without a unitary basis;
   it is you that make the ten by your counting, by fixing that tenness
   down to quantity; in choir and army there is something more than that,
   something not of your placing.

   But how do you come to have a number to place?

   The Number inherent apart from any enumeration has its own manner of
   being, but the other, that resulting upon the appearance of an external
   to be appraised by the Number within yourself, is either an Act of
   these inherent numbers or an Act in accordance with them; in counting
   we produce number and so bring quantity into being just as in walking
   we bring a certain movement into being.

   But what of that "Number within us having its own manner of being"?

   It is the Number of our essence. "Our essence" we read "partakes of
   Number and harmony and, also, is Number and harmony." "Neither body nor
   magnitude," someone says: soul, then, is Number since it is essence.
   The number belonging to body is an essence of the order of body; the
   number belonging to soul constitutes the essences of souls.

   In the Intellectuals, all, if the Absolute Living-Form, there is a
   multiple -- a triad, let us say -- that Triad of the Living-Form is of
   the nature of essence: and the Triad prior to any living thing, Triad
   in the realm of Being, is a principle of essence.

   When you enumerate two things -- say, animal and beauty -- each of
   these remains one thing; the number is your production; it lay within
   yourself; it is you that elaborate quantity, here the dyad. But when
   you declare virtue to be a Tetrad, you are affirming a Tetrad which
   does actually exist; the parts, so to speak, make one thing; you are
   taking as the object of your act a Unity -- Tetrad to which you
   accommodate the Tetrad within yourself.

   17. But what of the Infinite Number we hear of; does not all this
   reasoning set it under limit?

   And rightly so if the thing is to be a number; limitlessness and number
   are in contradiction.

   How, then, do we come to use the term? Is it that we think of Number as
   we think of an infinite line, not with the idea that any such lire
   exists but that even the very greatest -- that of the [path of the]
   universe, for example -- may be thought of as still greater? So it
   might be with number; let it be fixed, yet we still are free to think
   of its double, though not of course to produce the doubled quantity
   since it is impossible to join to the actual what is no more than a
   conception, a phantasm, private to ourselves.

   It is our view that there does exist an infinite line, among the
   Intellectual Beings: for There a line would not be quantitative and
   being without quantity could be numerically infinite. This however
   would be in another mode than that of limitless extension. In what mode
   then? In that the conception of the Absolute Line does not include the
   conception of limit.

   But what sort of thing is the Line in the Intellectual and what place
   does it hold?

   It is later than Number since unity is observed in it; it rises at one
   point and traverses one course and simply lacks the quantity that would
   be the measure of the distance.

   But where does this thing lie? Is it existent only in the defining
   thought, so to speak?

   No; it is also a thing, though a thing of the Intellectual. All that
   belongs to that order is at once an Intellectual and in some degree the
   concrete thing. There is a position, as well as a manner of being, for
   all configurations, for surface, for solid. And certainly the
   configurations are not of our devising; for example, the configurations
   of the universe are obviously antecedent to ourselves; so it must be
   with all the configurations of the things of nature; before the bodily
   reproductions all must exist There, without configuration, primal
   configurations. For these primals are not shapes in something;
   self-belonging, they are perfect without extension; only the extended
   needs the external. In the sphere of Real-Being the configuration is
   always a unity; it becomes discrete either in the Living-Form or
   immediately before: I say "becomes discrete" not in the sense that it
   takes magnitude There but that it is broken apart for the purpose of
   the Living-Form and is allotted to the bodies within that Form -- for
   instance, to Fire There, the Intellectual Pyramid. And because the
   Ideal-Form is There, the fire of this sphere seeks to produce that
   configuration against the check of Matter: and so of all the rest as we
   read in the account of the realm of sense.

   But does the Life-Form contain the configurations by the mere fact of
   its life?

   They are in the Intellectual-Principle previously but they also exist
   in the Living-Form; if this be considered as including the
   Intellectual-Principle, then they are primally in the Life-Form, but if
   that Principle comes first then they are previously in that. And if the
   Life-Form entire contains also souls, it must certainly be subsequent
   to the Intellectual-Principle.

   No doubt there is the passage "Whatever Intellect sees in the entire
   Life-Form"; thus seeing, must not the Intellectual-Principle be the
   later?

   No; the seeing may imply merely that the reality comes into being by
   the fact of that seeing; the Intellectual-Principle is not external to
   the Life-Form; all is one; the Act of the Intellectual-Principle
   possesses itself of bare sphere, while the Life-Form holds the sphere
   as sphere of a living total.

   18. It appears then that Number in that realm is definite; it is we
   that can conceive the "More than is present"; the infinity lies in our
   counting: in the Real is no conceiving more than has been conceived;
   all stands entire; no number has been or could be omitted to make
   addition possible. It might be described as infinite in the sense that
   it has not been measured -- who is there to measure it? -- but it is
   solely its own, a concentrated unit, entire, not ringed round by any
   boundary; its manner of being is settled for it by itself alone. None
   of the Real-Beings is under limit; what is limited, measured, is what
   needs measure to prevent it running away into the unbounded. There
   every being is Measure; and therefore it is that all is beautiful.
   Because that is a living thing it is beautiful, holding the highest
   life, the complete, a life not tainted towards death, nothing mortal
   there, nothing dying. Nor is the life of that Absolute Living-Form some
   feeble flickering; it is primal, the brightest, holding all that life
   has of radiance; it is that first light which the souls There draw upon
   for their life and bring with them when they come here. It knows for
   what purpose it lives, towards What it lives, from Whence it lives; for
   the Whence of its life is the Whither... and close above it stands the
   wisdom of all, the collective Intellectual-Principle, knit into it, one
   with it, colouring it to a higher goodness, by kneading wisdom into it,
   making its beauty still more august. Even here the august and veritably
   beautiful life is the life in wisdom, here dimly seen, There purely.
   For There wisdom gives sight to the seer and power for the fuller
   living and in that tenser life both to see and to become what is seen.

   Here attention is set for the most part upon the unliving and, in the
   living, upon what is lifeless in them; the inner life is taken only
   with alloy: There, all are Living Beings, living wholly, unalloyed;
   however you may choose to study one of them apart from its life, in a
   moment that life is flashed out upon you: once you have known the
   Essence that pervades them, conferring that unchangeable life upon
   them, once you perceive the judgement and wisdom and knowledge that are
   theirs, you can but smile at all the lower nature with its pretention
   to Reality.

   In virtue of this Essence it is that life endures, that the
   Intellectual-Principle endures, that the Beings stand in their
   eternity; nothing alters it, turns it, moves it; nothing, indeed, is in
   being besides it to touch it; anything that is must be its product;
   anything opposed to it could not affect it. Being itself could not make
   such an opposite into Being; that would require a prior to both and
   that prior would then be Being; so that Parmenides was right when he
   taught the identity of Being and Unity. Being is thus beyond contact
   not because it stands alone but because it is Being. For Being alone
   has Being in its own right.

   How then can we deny to it either Being or anything at all that may
   exist effectively, anything that may derive from it?

   As long as it exists it produces: but it exists for ever; so,
   therefore, do its products. And so great is it in power and beauty that
   it remains the allurer, all things of the universe depending from it
   and rejoicing to hold their trace of it and through that to seek their
   good. To us, existence is before the good; all this world desires life
   and wisdom in order to Being; every soul and every intellect seeks to
   be its Being, but Being is sufficient to itself.
     __________________________________________________________________

  SEVENTH TRACTATE.

  HOW THE MULTIPLICITY OF THE IDEAL-FORMS CAME INTO BEING:
  AND UPON THE GOOD.

   1. God, or some one of the gods, in sending the souls to their birth,
   placed eyes in the face to catch the light and allotted to each sense
   the appropriate organ, providing thus for the safety which comes by
   seeing and hearing in time and, seeking or avoiding under guidance of
   touch.

   But what led to this provision?

   It cannot be that other forms of being were produced first and that,
   these perishing in the absence of the senses, the maker at last
   supplied the means by which men and other living beings might avert
   disaster.

   We may be told that it lay within the divine knowledge that animal life
   would be exposed to heat and cold and other such experiences incident
   to body and that in this knowledge he provided the senses and the
   organs apt to their activity in order that the living total might not
   fall an easy prey.

   Now, either he gave these organs to souls already possessing the
   sensitive powers or he gave senses and organs alike.

   But if the souls were given the powers as well as the organs, then,
   souls though they were, they had no sensation before that giving. If
   they possessed these powers from the moment of being souls and became
   souls in order to their entry into process, then it is of their very
   nature to belong to process, unnatural to them to be outside of process
   and within the Intellectual: they were made in the intent that they
   should belong to the alien and have their being amid evil; the divine
   provision would consist in holding them to their disaster; this is
   God's reasoned purpose, this the plan entire.

   Now what is the foundation of reasoned plan?

   Precedent planning, it may be; but still we are forced back to some
   thing or things determining it. What would these be here?

   Either sense-perception or intellect. But sense-perception it cannot in
   this case be: intellect is left; yet, starting from intellect, the
   conclusion will be knowledge, not therefore the handling of the
   sensible; what begins with the intellectual and proceeds to the
   intellectual can certainly not end in dealings with the sensible.
   Providence, then, whether over living beings or over any part of the
   universe was never the outcome of plan.

   There is in fact no planning There; we speak of reasoned purpose in the
   world of things only to convey that the universe is of the character
   which in the later order would point to a wise purposing; Providence
   implies that things are as, in the later order, a competent
   foreplanning would produce them. Reasoning serves, in beings not of the
   order above that need, to supply for the higher power; foresight is
   necessary in the lack of power which could dispense with it; it labours
   towards some one occurrence in preference to another and it goes in a
   sort of dread of the unfitting; where only the fitting can occur, there
   is no foreseeing. So with planning; where one only of two things can
   be, what place is there for plan? The alone and one and utterly simplex
   cannot involve a "this to avert that": if the "this" could not be, the
   "that" must; the serviceable thing appeared and at once approved itself
   so.

   But surely this is foreseeing, deliberating: are we not back at what
   was said at the beginning, that God did to this end give both the
   senses and the powers, however perplexing that giving be?

   No: all turns on the necessary completeness of Act; we cannot think
   anything belonging to God to be other than a whole and all and
   therefore in anything of God's that all must be contained; God
   therefore must take in the future, present beforehand. Certainly there
   is no later in the divine; what is There as present is future for
   elsewhere. If then the future is present, it must be present as having
   been foreconceived for later coming to be; at that divine stage
   therefore it lacks nothing and therefore can never lack; all existed,
   eternally and in such a way that at the later stage any particular
   thing may be said to exist for this or that purpose; the All, in its
   extension and so to speak unfolding, is able to present succession
   while yet it is simultaneous; this is because it contains the cause of
   all as inherent to itself.

   2. Thus we have even here the means of knowing the nature of the
   Intellectual-Principle, though, seeing it more closely than anything
   else, we still see it at less than its worth. We know that it exists
   but its cause we do not see, or, if we do, we see that cause as
   something apart. We see a man -- or an eye, if you like -- but this is
   an image or part of an image; what is in that Principle is at once Man
   and the reason of his being; for There man -- or eye -- must be,
   itself, an intellective thing and a cause of its being; it could not
   exist at all unless it were that cause, whereas here, everything
   partial is separate and so is the cause of each. In the Intellectual,
   all is at one so that the thing is identical with the cause.

   Even here the thing and its cause are often identical -- an eclipse
   furnishes an example -- what then is there to prevent other things too
   being identical with their cause and this cause being the essence of
   the thing? It must be so; and by this search after the cause the
   thing's essence is reached, for the essence of a thing is its cause. I
   am not here saying that the informing Idea is the cause of the thing --
   though this is true -- but that the Idea itself, unfolded, reveals the
   cause inherent in it.

   A thing of inactivity, even though alive, cannot include its own cause;
   but where could a Forming-Idea, a member of the Intellectual-Principle,
   turn in quest of its cause? We may be answered "In the
   Intellectual-Principle"; but the two are not distinct; the Idea is the
   Intellectual-Principle; and if that Principle must contain the Ideas
   complete, their cause must be contained in them. The
   Intellectual-Principle itself contains every cause of the things of its
   content; but these of its content are identically
   Intellectual-Principle, each of them Intellectual-Principle; none of
   them, thus, can lack its own cause; each springs into being carrying
   with it the reason of its being. No result of chance, each must rise
   complete with its cause; it is an integral and so includes the
   excellence bound up with the cause. This is how all participants in the
   Idea are put into possession of their cause.

   In our universe, a coherent total of multiplicity, the several items
   are linked each to the other, and by the fact that it is an all every
   cause is included in it: even in the particular thing the part is
   discernibly related to the whole, for the parts do not come into being
   separately and successively but are mutually cause and caused at one
   and the same moment. Much more in the higher realm must all the singles
   exist for the whole and each for itself: if then that world is the
   conjoint reality of all, of an all not chance-ruled and not sectional,
   the cause There must include the causes: every item must hold, in its
   very nature, the uncaused possession of its cause; uncaused,
   independent and standing apart from cause, they must be self-contained,
   cause and all.

   Further, since nothing There is chance-sprung, and the multiplicity in
   each comprehends the entire content, then the cause of every member can
   be named; the cause was present from the beginning, inherent, not a
   cause but a fact of the being; or, rather, cause and manner of being
   were one. What could an Idea have, as cause, over and above the
   Intellectual-Principle? It is a thought of that Principle and cannot,
   at that, be considered as anything but a perfect product. If it is thus
   perfect we cannot speak of anything in which it is lacking nor cite any
   reason for such lack. That thing must be present, and we can say why.
   The why is inherent, therefore, in the entity, that is to say in every
   thought and activity of the Intellectual-Principle. Take for example
   the Idea of Man; Man entire is found to contribute to it; he is in that
   Idea in all his fulness including everything that from the beginning
   belonged to Man. If Man were not complete There, so that there were
   something to be added to the Idea, that additional must belong to a
   derivative; but Man exists from eternity and must therefore be
   complete; the man born is the derivative.

   3. What then is there to prevent man having been the object of planning
   There?

   No: all stands in that likeness, nothing to be added or taken away;
   this planning and reasoning is based only on an assumption; things are
   taken to be in process and this suggests planning and reasoning; insist
   on the eternity of the process and planning falls to the ground. There
   can be no planning over the eternal; that would imply forgetfulness of
   a first state; further, if the second state were better, things stood
   ill at first; if they stood well, so they must remain.

   Only in conjunction with their causes are things good; even in this
   sphere a thing is good in virtue of being complete; form means that the
   thing is complete, the Matter duly controlled; this control means that
   nothing has been left crude; but something is so left if anything
   belonging to the shape be missing-eye, or other part. Thus to state
   cause is to state the thing complete. Why eyes or eyebrows? For
   completion: if you say "For preservation," you affirm an indwelling
   safeguard of the essence, something contributory to the being: the
   essence, then, preceded the safeguard and the cause was inbound with
   the essence; distinct, this cause is in its nature a part of the
   essence.

   All parts, thus, exist in regard to each other: the essence is
   all-embracing, complete, entire; the excellency is inbound with the
   cause and embraced by it; the being, the essence, the cause, all are
   one.

   But, at this, sense-perception -- even in its particular modes -- is
   involved in the Idea by eternal necessity, in virtue of the
   completeness of the Idea; Intellectual-Principle, as all-inclusive,
   contains in itself all by which we are brought, later, to recognise
   this perfection in its nature; the cause, There, was one total,
   all-inclusive; thus Man in the Intellectual was not purely intellect,
   sense-perception being an addition made upon his entry into birth: all
   this would seem to imply a tendance in that great Principle towards the
   lower, towards this sphere.

   But how could that Principle have such perception, be aware of things
   of sense? Surely it is untenable on the one hand that sense-perception
   should exist There, from eternity, and on the other that only upon the
   debasement of the soul should there be sense-perception here and the
   accomplishment in this realm of the Act of what was always a power in
   that?

   4. To meet the difficulty we must make a close examination of the
   nature of Man in the Intellectual; perhaps, though, it is better to
   begin with the man of this plane lest we be reasoning to Man There from
   a misconception of Man here. There may even be some who deny the
   difference.

   We ask first whether man as here is a Reason-Principle different to
   that soul which produces him as here and gives him life and thought; or
   is he that very soul or, again, the [yet lower] soul using the human
   body?

   Now if man is a reasonable living being and by "living being" is meant
   a conjoint of soul and body, the Reason-Principle of man is not
   identical with soul. But if the conjoint of soul and body is the
   reason-principle of man, how can man be an eternal reality, seeing that
   it is only when soul and body have come together that the
   Reason-Principle so constituted appears?

   The Reason-Principle will be the foreteller of the man to be, not the
   Man Absolute with which we are dealing but more like his definition,
   and not at that indicating his nature since what is indicated is not
   the Idea that is to enter Matter but only that of the known thing, the
   conjoint. We have not yet found the Man we are seeking, the equivalent
   of the Reason-Principle.

   But -- it may be said -- the Reason-Principle of such beings must be
   some conjoint, one element in another.

   This does not define the principle of either. If we are to state with
   entire accuracy the Reason-Principles of the Forms in Matter and
   associated with Matter, we cannot pass over the generative
   Reason-Principle, in this case that of Man, especially since we hold
   that a complete definition must cover the essential manner of being.

   What, then, is this essential of Man? What is the indwelling,
   inseparable something which constitutes Man as here? Is the
   Reason-Principle itself a reasoning living being or merely a maker of
   that reasoning life-form? and what is it apart from that act of making?

   The living being corresponds to a reasoning life in the
   Reason-Principle; man therefore is a reasoning life: but there is no
   life without soul; either, then, the soul supplies the reasoning life
   -- and man therefore is not an essence but simply an activity of the
   soul -- or the soul is the man.

   But if reasoning soul is the man, why does it not constitute man upon
   its entry into some other animal form?

   5. Man, thus, must be some Reason-Principle other than soul. But why
   should he not be some conjoint -- a soul in a certain Reason-Principle
   -- the Reason-Principle being, as it were, a definite activity which
   however could not exist without that which acts?

   This is the case with the Reason-Principles in seed which are neither
   soulless nor entirely soul. For these productive principles cannot be
   devoid of soul and there is nothing surprising in such essences being
   Reason-Principles.

   But these principles producing other forms than man, of what phase of
   soul are they activities? Of the vegetal soul? Rather of that which
   produces animal life, a brighter soul and therefore one more intensely
   living.

   The soul of that order, the soul that has entered into Matter of that
   order, is man by having, apart from body, a certain disposition; within
   body it shapes all to its own fashion, producing another form of Man,
   man reduced to what body admits, just as an artist may make a reduced
   image of that again.

   It is soul, then, that holds the pattern and Reason-Principles of Man,
   the natural tendencies, the dispositions and powers -- all feeble since
   this is not the Primal Man -- and it contains also the Ideal-Forms of
   other senses, Forms which themselves are senses, bright to all seeming
   but images, and dim in comparison with those of the earlier order.

   The higher Man, above this sphere, rises from the more godlike soul, a
   soul possessed of a nobler humanity and brighter perceptions. This must
   be the Man of Plato's definition ["Man is Soul"], where the addition
   "Soul as using body" marks the distinction between the soul which uses
   body directly and the soul, poised above, which touches body only
   through that intermediary.

   The Man of the realm of birth has sense-perception: the higher soul
   enters to bestow a brighter life, or rather does not so much enter as
   simply impart itself; for soul does not leave the Intellectual but,
   maintaining that contact, holds the lower life as pendant from it,
   blending with it by the natural link of Reason-Principle to
   Reason-Principle: and man, the dimmer, brightens under that
   illumination.

   6. But how can that higher soul have sense-perception?

   It is the perception of what falls under perception There, sensation in
   the mode of that realm: it is the source of the soul's perception of
   the sense-realm in its correspondence with the Intellectual. Man as
   sense-percipient becomes aware of that correspondence and accommodates
   the sense-realm to the lowest extremity of its counterpart There,
   proceeding from the fire Intellectual to the fire here which becomes
   perceptible by its analogy with that of the higher sphere. If material
   things existed There, the soul would perceive them; Man in the
   Intellectual, Man as Intellectual soul, would be aware of the
   terrestrial. This is how the secondary Man, copy of Man in the
   Intellectual, contains the Reason-Principles in copy; and Man in the
   Intellectual-Principle contained the Man that existed before any man.
   The diviner shines out upon the secondary and the secondary upon the
   tertiary; and even the latest possesses them all -- not in the sense of
   actually living by them all but as standing in under-parallel to them.
   Some of us act by this lowest; in another rank there is a double
   activity, a trace of the higher being included; in yet another there is
   a blending of the third grade with the others: each is that Man by
   which he acts while each too contains all the grades, though in some
   sense not so. On the separation of the third life and third Man from
   the body, then if the second also departs -- of course not losing hold
   on the Above -- the two, as we are told, will occupy the same place. No
   doubt it seems strange that a soul which has been the Reason-Principle
   of a man should come to occupy the body of an animal: but the soul has
   always been all, and will at different times be this and that.

   Pure, not yet fallen to evil, the soul chooses man and is man, for this
   is the higher, and it produces the higher. It produces also the still
   loftier beings, the Celestials [Daimons], who are of one Form with the
   soul that makes Man: higher still stands that Man more entirely of the
   Celestial rank, almost a god, reproducing God, a Celestial closely
   bound to God as a man is to Man. For that Being into which man develops
   is not to be called a god; there remains the difference which
   distinguishes souls, all of the same race though they be. This is
   taking "Celestial" ["Daimon"] in the sense of Plato.

   When a soul which in the human state has been thus attached chooses
   animal nature and descends to that, it is giving forth the
   Reason-Principle -- necessarily in it -- of that particular animal:
   this lower it contained and the activity has been to the lower.

   7. But if it is by becoming evil and inferior that the soul produces
   the animal nature, the making of ox or horse was not at the outset in
   its character; the reason-principle of the animal, and the animal
   itself, must lie outside of the natural plan?

   Inferior, yes; but outside of nature, no. The thing There [Soul in the
   Intellectual] was in some sense horse and dog from the beginning; given
   the condition, it produces the higher kind; let the condition fail,
   then, since produce it must, it produces what it may: it is like a
   skillful craftsman competent to create all kinds of works of art but
   reduced to making what is ordered and what the aptitude of his material
   indicates.

   The power of the All-Soul, as Reason-Principle of the universe, may be
   considered as laying down a pattern before the effective separate
   powers go forth from it: this plan would be something like a tentative
   illumining of Matter; the elaborating soul would give minute
   articulation to these representations of itself; every separate
   effective soul would become that towards which it tended, assuming that
   particular form as the choral dancer adapts himself to the action set
   down for him.

   But this is to anticipate: our enquiry was How there can be
   sense-perception in man without the implication that the Divine
   addresses itself to the realm of process. We maintained, and proved,
   that the Divine does not look to this realm but that things here are
   dependent upon those and represent them and that man here, holding his
   powers from Thence, is directed Thither, so that, while sense makes the
   environment of what is of sense in him, the Intellectual in him is
   linked to the Intellectual.

   What we have called the perceptibles of that realm enter into
   cognisance in a way of their own, since they are not material, while
   the sensible sense here -- so distinguished as dealing with corporeal
   objects -- is fainter than the perception belonging to that higher
   world; the man of this sphere has sense-perception because existing in
   a less true degree and taking only enfeebled images of things There --
   perceptions here are Intellections of the dimmer order, and the
   Intellections There are vivid perceptions.

   8. So much for the thing of sense; but it would appear that the
   prototype There of the living form, the universal horse, must look
   deliberately towards this sphere; and, that being so, the idea of horse
   must have been worked out in order there be a horse here?

   Yet what was that there to present the idea of the horse it was desired
   to produce? Obviously the idea of horse must exist before there was any
   planning to make a horse; it could not be thought of in order to be
   made; there must have been horse unproduced before that which was later
   to come into being. If, then, the thing existed before it was produced
   -- if it cannot have been thought of in order to its production -- the
   Being that held the horse as There held it in presence without any
   looking to this sphere; it was not with intent to set horse and the
   rest in being here that they were contained There; it is that, the
   universal existing, the reproduction followed of necessity since the
   total of things was not to halt at the Intellectual. Who was there to
   call a halt to a power capable at once of self-concentration and of
   outflow?

   But how come these animals of earth to be There? What have they to do
   within God? Reasoning beings, all very well; but this host of the
   unreasoning, what is there august in them? Surely the very contrary?

   The answer is that obviously the unity of our universe must be that of
   a manifold since it is subsequent to that unity-absolute; otherwise it
   would be not next to that but the very same thing. As a next it could
   not hold the higher rank of being more perfectly a unity; it must fall
   short: since the best is a unity, inevitably there must be something
   more than unity, for deficiency involves plurality.

   But why should it not be simply a dyad?

   Because neither of the constituents could ever be a pure unity, but at
   the very least a duality and so progressively [in an endless
   dualization]. Besides, in that first duality of the hypothesis there
   would be also movement and rest, Intellect and the life included in
   Intellect, all-embracing Intellect and life complete. That means that
   it could not be one Intellect; it must be Intellect agglomerate
   including all the particular intellects, a thing therefore as multiple
   as all the Intellects and more so; and the life in it would nat be that
   of one soul but of all the souls with the further power of producing
   the single souls: it would be the entire living universe containing
   much besides man; for if it contained only man, man would be alone
   here.

   9. Admitted, then -- it will be said -- for the nobler forms of life;
   but how can the divine contain the mean, the unreasoning? The mean is
   the unreasoning, since value depends upon reason and the worth of the
   intellective implies worthlessness where intellection is lacking. Yet
   how can there be question of the unreasoning or unintellective when all
   particulars exist in the divine and come forth from it?

   In taking up the refutation of these objections, we must insist upon
   the consideration that neither man nor animals here can be thought of
   as identical with the counterparts in the higher realm; those ideal
   forms must be taken in a larger way. And again the reasoning thing is
   not of that realm: here the reasoning, There the pre-reasoning.

   Why then does man alone reason here, the others remaining reasonless?

   Degrees of reasoning here correspond to degrees of Intellection in that
   other sphere, as between man and the other living beings There; and
   those others do in some measure act by understanding.

   But why are they not at man's level of reason: why also the difference
   from man to man?

   We must reflect that, since the many forms of lives are movements --
   and so with the Intellections -- they cannot be identical: there must
   be different lives, distinct intellections, degrees of lightsomeness
   and clarity: there must be firsts, seconds, thirds, determined by
   nearness to the Firsts. This is how some of the Intellections are gods,
   others of a secondary order having what is here known as reason, while
   others again belong to the so-called unreasoning: but what we know here
   as unreasoning was There a Reason-Principle; the unintelligent was an
   Intellect; the Thinker of Horse was Intellect and the Thought, Horse,
   was an Intellect.

   But [it will be objected] if this were a matter of mere thinking we
   might well admit that the intellectual concept, remaining concept,
   should take in the unintellectual, but where concept is identical with
   thing how can the one be an Intellection and the other without
   intelligence? Would not this be Intellect making itself unintelligent?

   No: the thing is not unintelligent; it is Intelligence in a particular
   mode, corresponding to a particular aspect of Life; and just as life in
   whatever form it may appear remains always life, so Intellect is not
   annulled by appearing in a certain mode. Intellectual-Principle adapted
   to some particular living being does not cease to be the
   Intellectual-Principle of all, including man: take it where you will,
   every manifestation is the whole, though in some special mode; the
   particular is produced but the possibility is of all. In the particular
   we see the Intellectual-Principle in realization; the realized is its
   latest phase; in one case the last aspect is "horse"; at "horse" ended
   the progressive outgoing towards the lesser forms of life, as in
   another case it will end at something lower still. The unfolding of the
   powers of this Principle is always attended by some abandonment in
   regard to the highest; the outgoing is by loss, and by this loss the
   powers become one thing or another according to the deficiency of the
   life-form produced by the failing principle; it is then that they find
   the means of adding various requisites; the safeguards of the life
   becoming inadequate there appear nail, talon, fang, horn. Thus the
   Intellectual-Principle by its very descent is directed towards the
   perfect sufficiency of the natural constitution, finding there within
   itself the remedy of the failure.

   10. But failure There? What can defensive horns serve to There? To
   sufficiency as living form, to completeness. That principle must be
   complete as living form, complete as Intellect, complete as life, so
   that if it is not to be one thing it may be another. Its characteristic
   difference is in this power of being now this, now that, so that,
   summing all, it may be the completest life-form, Intelligence complete,
   life in greatest fulness with each of the particulars complete in its
   degree while yet, over all that multiplicity, unity reigns.

   If all were one identity, the total could not contain this variety of
   forms; there would be nothing but a self-sufficing unity. Like every
   compound it must consist of things progressively differing in form and
   safeguarded in that form. This is in the very nature of shape and
   Reason-Principle; a shape, that of man let us suppose, must include a
   certain number of differences of part but all dominated by a unity;
   there will be the noble and the inferior, eye and finger, but all
   within a unity; the part will be inferior in comparison with the total
   but best in its place. The Reason-Principle, too, is at once the living
   form and something else, something distinct from the being of that
   form. It is so with virtue also; it contains at once the universal and
   the particular; and the total is good because the universal is not
   differentiated.

   11. The very heavens, patently multiple, cannot be thought to disdain
   any form of life since this universe holds everything. Now how do these
   things come to be here? Does the higher realm contain all of the lower?

   All that has been shaped by Reason-Principle and conforms to Idea.

   But, having fire [warmth] and water, it will certainly have vegetation;
   how does vegetation exist There? Earth, too? either these are alive or
   they are There as dead things and then not everything There has life.
   How in sum can the things of this realm be also There?

   Vegetal life we can well admit, for the plant is a Reason-Principle
   established in life. If in the plant the Reason-Principle, entering
   Matter and constituting the plant, is a certain form of life, a
   definite soul, then, since every Reason-Principle is a unity, then
   either this of plant-life is the primal or before it there is a primal
   plant, source of its being: that first plant would be a unity; those
   here, being multiple, must derive from a unity. This being so, that
   primal must have much the truer life and be the veritable plant, the
   plants here deriving from it in the secondary and tertiary degree and
   living by a vestige of its life.

   But earth; how is there earth There: what is the being of earth and how
   are we to represent to ourselves the living earth of that realm?

   First, what is it, what the mode of its being?

   Earth, here and There alike, must possess shape and a Reason-Principle.
   Now in the case of the vegetal, the Reason-Principle of the plant here
   was found to be living in that higher realm: is there such a
   Reason-Principle in our earth?

   Take the most earthy of things found shaped in earth and they exhibit,
   even they, the indwelling earth-principle. The growing and shaping of
   stones, the internal moulding of mountains as they rise, reveal the
   working of an ensouled Reason-Principle fashioning them from within and
   bringing them to that shape: this, we must take it, is the creative
   earth-principle corresponding to what we call the specific principle of
   a tree; what we know as earth is like the wood of the tree; to cut out
   a stone is like lopping a twig from a tree, except of course that there
   is no hurt done, the stone remaining a member of the earth as the twig,
   uncut, of the tree.

   Realizing thus that the creative force inherent in our earth is life
   within a Reason-Principle, we are easily convinced that the earth There
   is much more primally alive, that it is a reasoned Earth-Livingness,
   the earth of Real-Being, earth primally, the source of ours.

   Fire, similarly, with other such things, must be a Reason-Principle
   established in Matter: fire certainly does not originate in the
   friction to which it may be traced; the friction merely brings out a
   fire already existent in the scheme and contained in the materials
   rubbed together. Matter does not in its own character possess this
   fire-power: the true cause is something informing the Matter, that is
   to say, a Reason-Principle, obviously therefore a soul having the power
   of bringing fire into being; that is, a life and a Reason-Principle in
   one.

   It is with this in mind that Plato says there is soul in everything of
   this sphere. That soul is the cause of the fire of the sense-world; the
   cause of fire here is a certain Life of fiery character, the more
   authentic fire. That transcendent fire being more truly fire will be
   more veritably alive; the fire absolute possesses life. And the same
   principles apply to the other elements, water and air.

   Why, then, are water and air not ensouled as earth is?

   Now, it is quite certain that these are equally within the living
   total, parts of the living all; life does not appear visibly in them;
   but neither does it in the case of the earth where its presence is
   inferred by what earth produces: but there are living things in fire
   and still more manifestly in water and there are systems of life in the
   air. The particular fire, rising only to be quenched, eludes the soul
   animating the universe; it slips away from the magnitude which would
   manifest the soul within it; so with air and water. If these Kinds
   could somehow be fastened down to magnitude they would exhibit the soul
   within them, now concealed by the fact that their function requires
   them to be loose or flowing. It is much as in the case of the fluids
   within ourselves; the flesh and all that is formed out of the blood
   into flesh show the soul within, but the blood itself, not bringing us
   any sensation, seems not to have soul; yet it must; the blood is not
   subject to blind force; its nature obliges it to abstain from the soul
   which nonetheless is indwelling in it. This must be the case with the
   three elements; it is the fact that the living beings formed from the
   close conglomeration of air [the stars] are not susceptible to
   suffering. But just as air, so long as it remains itself, eludes the
   light which is and remains unyielding, so too, by the effect of its
   circular movement, it eludes soul -- and, in another sense, does not.
   And so with fire and water.

   12. Or take it another way: Since in our view this universe stands to
   that as copy to original, the living total must exist There beforehand;
   that is the realm of complete Being and everything must exist There.

   The sky There must be living and therefore not bare of stars, here
   known as the heavens -- for stars are included in the very meaning of
   the word. Earth too will be There, and not void but even more intensely
   living and containing all that lives and moves upon our earth and the
   plants obviously rooted in life; sea will be There and all waters with
   the movement of their unending life and all the living things of the
   water; air too must be a member of that universe with the living things
   of air as here.

   The content of that living thing must surely be alive -- as in this
   sphere -- and all that lives must of necessity be There. The nature of
   the major parts determines that of the living forms they comprise; by
   the being and content of the heaven There are determined all the
   heavenly forms of life; if those lesser forms were not There, that
   heaven itself would not be.

   To ask how those forms of life come to be There is simply asking how
   that heaven came to be; it is asking whence comes life, whence the
   All-Life, whence the All-Soul, whence collective Intellect: and the
   answer is that There no indigence or impotence can exist but all must
   be teeming, seething, with life. All flows, so to speak, from one fount
   not to be thought of as one breath or warmth but rather as one quality
   englobing and safeguarding all qualities -- sweetness with fragrance,
   wine -- quality and the savours of everything that may be tasted, all
   colours seen, everything known to touch, all that ear may hear, all
   melodies, every rhythm.

   13. For Intellectual-Principle is not a simplex, nor is the soul that
   proceeds from it: on the contrary things include variety in the degree
   of their simplicity, that is to say in so far as they are not compounds
   but Principles and Activities; -- the activity of the lowest is simple
   in the sense of being a fading-out, that of the First as the total of
   all activity. Intellectual-Principle is moved in a movement unfailingly
   true to one course, but its unity and identity are not those of the
   partial; they are those of its universality; and indeed the partial
   itself is not a unity but divides to infinity.

   We know that Intellectual-Principle has a source and advances to some
   term as its ultimate; now, is the intermediate between source and term
   to thought of as a line or as some distinct kind of body uniform and
   unvaried?

   Where at that would be its worth? it had no change, if no
   differentiation woke it into life, it would not be a Force; that
   condition would in no way differ from mere absence of power and, even
   calling it movement, it would still be the movement of a life not
   all-varied but indiscriminate; now it is of necessity that life be
   all-embracing, covering all the realms, and that nothing fail of life.
   Intellectual-Principle, therefore, must move in every direction upon
   all, or more precisely must ever have so moved.

   A simplex moving retains its character; either there is no change,
   movement has been null, or if there has been advance it still remains a
   simplex and at once there is a permanent duality: if the one member of
   this duality is identical with the other, then it is still as it was,
   there has been no advance; if one member differs from the other, it has
   advanced with differentiation, and, out of a certain identity and
   difference, it has produced a third unity. This production, based on
   Identity and Difference, must be in its nature identical and different;
   it will be not some particular different thing but Collective
   Difference, as its Identity is Collective Identity.

   Being, thus, at once Collective Identity and Collective Difference,
   Intellectual-Principle must reach over all different things; its very
   nature then is to modify into a universe. If the realm of different
   things existed before it, these different things must have modified it
   from the beginning; if they did not, this Intellectual-Principle
   produced all, or, rather, was all.

   Beings could not exist save by the activity of Intellectual-Principle;
   wandering down every way it produces thing after thing, but wandering
   always within itself in such self-bound wandering as authentic
   Intellect may know; this wandering permitted to its nature is among
   real beings which keep pace with its movement; but it is always itself;
   this is a stationary wandering, a wandering within the Meadow of Truth
   from which it does not stray.

   It holds and covers the universe which it has made the space, so to
   speak, of its movement, itself being also that universe which is space
   to it. And this Meadow of Truth is varied so that movement through it
   may be possible; suppose it not always and everywhere varied, the
   failing of diversity is a failure of movement; failure in movement
   would mean a failing of the Intellectual Act; halting, it has ceased to
   exercise its Intellectual Act; this ceasing, it ceases to be.

   The Intellectual-Principle is the Intellectual Act; its movement is
   complete, filling Being complete; And the entire of Being is the
   Intellectual Act entire, comprehending all life and the unfailing
   succession of things. Because this Principle contains Identity and
   Difference its division is ceaselessly bringing the different things to
   light. Its entire movement is through life and among living things. To
   a traveller over land, all is earth but earth abounding in difference:
   so in this journey the life through which Intellectual-Principle passes
   is one life but, in its ceaseless changing, a varied life.

   Throughout this endless variation it maintains the one course because
   it is not, itself, subject to change but on the contrary is present as
   identical and unvarying Being to the rest of things. For if there be no
   such principle of unchanging identity to things, all is dead, activity
   and actuality exist nowhere. These "other things" through which it
   passes are also Intellectual-Principle itself; otherwise it is not the
   all-comprehending principle: if it is to be itself, it must be
   all-embracing; failing that, it is not itself. If it is complete in
   itself, complete because all-embracing, and there is nothing which does
   not find place in this total, then there can be nothing belonging to it
   which is not different; only by difference can there be such
   co-operation towards a total. If it knew no otherness but was pure
   identity its essential Being would be the less for that failure to
   fulfil the specific nature which its completion requires.

   14. On the nature of the Intellectual-Principle we get light from its
   manifestations; they show that it demands such diversity as is
   compatible with its being a monad. Take what principle you will, that
   of plant or animal: if this principle were a pure unity and not a
   specifically varied thing, it could not so serve as principle; its
   product would be Matter, the principle not having taken all those forms
   necessary if Matter is to be permeated and utterly transformed. A face
   is not one mass; there are nose and eyes; and the nose is not a unity
   but has the differences which make it a nose; as bare unity it would be
   mere mass.

   There is infinity in Intellectual-Principle since, of its very nature,
   it is a multiple unity, not with the unity of a house but with that of
   a Reason-Principle, multiple in itself: in the one Intellectual design
   it includes within itself, as it were in outline, all the outlines, all
   the patterns. All is within it, all the powers and intellections; the
   division is not determined by a boundary but goes ever inward; this
   content is held as the living universe holds the natural forms of the
   living creatures in it from the greatest to the least, down even to the
   minutest powers where there is a halt at the individual form. The
   discrimination is not of items huddled within a sort of unity; this is
   what is known as the Universal Sympathy, not of course the sympathy
   known here which is a copy and prevails amongst things in separation;
   that authentic Sympathy consists in all being a unity and never
   discriminate.

   15. That Life, the various, the all-including, the primal and one, who
   can consider it without longing to be of it, disdaining all the other?

   All other life is darkness, petty and dim and poor; it is unclean and
   polluting the clean for if you do but look upon it you no longer see
   nor live this life which includes all living, in which there is nothing
   that does not live and live in a life of purity void of all that is
   ill. For evil is here where life is in copy and Intellect in copy;
   There is the archetype, that which is good in the very Idea -- we read
   -- as holding The Good in the pure Idea. That Archetype is good;
   Intellectual-Principle is good as holding its life by contemplation of
   the archetype; and it sees also as good the objects of its
   contemplation because it holds them in its act of contemplating the
   Principle of Good. But these objects come to it not as they are There
   but in accord with its own condition, for it is their source; they
   spring thence to be here, and Intellectual-Principle it is that has
   produced them by its vision There. In the very law, never, looking to
   That, could it fail of Intellectual Act; never, on the other hand,
   could it produce what is There; of itself it could not produce; Thence
   it must draw its power to bring forth, to teem with offspring of
   itself; from the Good it takes what itself did not possess. From that
   Unity came multiplicity to Intellectual-Principle; it could not sustain
   the power poured upon it and therefore broke it up; it turned that one
   power into variety so as to carry it piecemeal.

   All its production, effected in the power of The Good, contains
   goodness; it is good, itself, since it is constituted by these things
   of good; it is Good made diverse. It might be likened to a living
   sphere teeming with variety, to a globe of faces radiant with faces all
   living, to a unity of souls, all the pure souls, not faulty but the
   perfect, with Intellect enthroned over all so that the place entire
   glows with Intellectual splendour.

   But this would be to see it from without, one thing seeing another; the
   true way is to become Intellectual-Principle and be, our very selves,
   what we are to see.

   16. But even there we are not to remain always, in that beauty of the
   multiple; we must make haste yet higher, above this heaven of ours and
   even that; leaving all else aside we ask in awe "Who produced that
   realm and how?" Everything There is a single Idea in an individual
   impression and, informed by The Good, possesses the universal good
   transcendent over all. Each possessing that Being above, possesses also
   the total Living-Form in virtue of that transcendent life, possesses,
   no doubt, much else as well.

   But what is the Nature of this Transcendent in view of which and by way
   of which the Ideas are good?

   The best way of putting the question is to ask whether, when
   Intellectual-Principle looked towards The Good, it had Intellection of
   that unity as a multiplicity and, itself a unity, plied its Act by
   breaking into parts what it was too feeble to know as a whole.

   No: that would not be Intellection looking upon the Good; it would be a
   looking void of Intellection. We must think of it not as looking but as
   living; dependent upon That, it kept itself turned Thither; all the
   tendance taking place There and upon That must be a movement teeming
   with life and must so fill the looking Principle; there is no longer
   bare Act, there is a filling to saturation. Forthwith
   Intellectual-Principle becomes all things, knows that fact in virtue of
   its self-knowing and at once becomes Intellectual-Principle, filled so
   as to hold within itself that object of its vision, seeing all by the
   light from the Giver and bearing that Giver with it.

   In this way the Supreme may be understood to be the cause at once of
   essential reality and of the knowing of reality. The sun, cause of the
   existence of sense-things and of their being seen, is indirectly the
   cause of sight, without being either the faculty or the object:
   similarly this Principle, The Good, cause of Being and
   Intellectual-Principle, is a light appropriate to what is to be seen
   There and to their seer; neither the Beings nor the
   Intellectual-Principle, it is their source and by the light it sheds
   upon both makes them objects of Intellection. This filling procures the
   existence; after the filling, the being; the existence achieved, the
   seeing followed: the beginning is that state of not yet having been
   filled, though there is, also, the beginning which means that the
   Filling Principle was outside and by that act of filling gave shape to
   the filled.

   17. But in what mode are these secondaries, and Intellectual-Principle
   itself, within the First? They are not in the Filling Principle; they
   are not in the filled since before that moment it did not contain them.

   Giving need not comport possessing; in this order we are to think of a
   giver as a greater and of a gift as a lower; this is the meaning of
   origin among real Beings. First there must be an actualized thing; its
   laters must be potentially their own priors; a first must transcend its
   derivatives; the giver transcends the given, as a superior. If
   therefore there is a prior to actuality, that prior transcends Activity
   and so transcends Life. Our sphere containing life, there is a Giver of
   Life, a principle of greater good, of greater worth than Life; this
   possessed Life and had no need to look for it to any giver in
   possession of Life's variety.

   But the Life was a vestige of that Primal not a life lived by it; Life,
   then, as it looked towards That was undetermined; having looked it had
   determination though That had none. Life looks to unity and is
   determined by it, taking bound, limit, form. But this form is in the
   shaped, the shaper had none; the limit was not external as something
   drawn about a magnitude; the limit was that of the multiplicity of the
   Life There, limitless itself as radiated from its great Prior; the Life
   itself was not that of some determined being, or it would be no more
   than the life of an individual. Yet it is defined; it must then have
   been defined as the Life of a unity including multiplicity; certainly
   too each item of the multiplicity is determined, determined as multiple
   by the multiplicity of Life but as a unity by the fact of limit.

   As what, then, is its unity determined?

   As Intellectual-Principle: determined Life is Intellectual-Principle.
   And the multiplicity?

   As the multiplicity of Intellectual-Principles: all its multiplicity
   resolves itself into Intellectual-Principles -- on the one hand the
   collective Principle, on the other the particular Principles.

   But does this collective Intellectual-Principle include each of the
   particular Principles as identical with itself?

   No: it would be thus the container of only the one thing; since there
   are many Intellectual-Principles within the collective, there must be
   differentiation.

   Once more, how does the particular Intellect come to this
   differentiation?

   It takes its characteristic difference by becoming entirely a unity
   within the collective whose totality could not be identical with any
   particular.

   Thus the Life in the Supreme was the collectivity of power; the vision
   taking place There was the potentiality of all; Intellectual-Principle,
   thus arising, is manifested as this universe of Being. It stands over
   the Beings not as itself requiring base but that it may serve as base
   to the Form of the Firsts, the Formless Form. And it takes position
   towards the soul, becoming a light to the soul as itself finds its
   light in the First; whenever Intellectual-Principle becomes the
   determinant of soul it shapes it into Reasoning Soul, by communicating
   a trace of what itself has come to possess.

   Thus Intellectual-Principle is a vestige of the Supreme; but since the
   vestige is a Form going out into extension, into plurality, that Prior,
   as the source of Form, must be itself without shape and Form: if the
   Prior were a Form, the Intellectual-Principle itself could be only a
   Reason-Principle. It was necessary that The First be utterly without
   multiplicity, for otherwise it must be again referred to a prior.

   18. But in what way is the content of Intellectual-Principle
   participant in good? Is it because each member of it is an Idea or
   because of their beauty or how?

   Anything coming from The Good carries the image and type belonging to
   that original or deriving from it, as anything going back to warmth or
   sweetness carries the memory of those originals: Life entered into
   Intellectual-Principle from The Supreme, for its origin is in the
   Activity streaming Thence; Intellectual-Principle springs from the
   Supreme, and with it the beauty of the Ideas; at once all these, Life,
   Intellectual-Principle, Idea, must inevitably have goodness.

   But what is the common element in them? Derivation from the First is
   not enough to procure identical quality; there must be some element
   held in common by the things derived: one source may produce many
   differing things as also one outgoing thing may take difference in
   various recipients: what enters into the First Act is different from
   what that Act transmits and there is difference, again, in the effect
   here. Nonetheless every item may be good in a degree of its own. To
   what, then, is the highest degree due?

   But first we must ask whether Life is a good, bare Life, or only the
   Life streaming Thence, very different from the Life known here? Once
   more, then, what constitutes the goodness of Life?

   The Life of The Good, or rather not its Life but that given forth from
   it.

   But if in that higher Life there must be something from That, something
   which is the Authentic Life, we must admit that since nothing worthless
   can come Thence Life in itself is good; so too we must admit, in the
   case of Authentic Intellectual-Principle, that its Life because good
   derives from that First; thus it becomes clear that every Idea is good
   and informed by the Good. The Ideas must have something of good,
   whether as a common property or as a distinct attribution or as held in
   some distinct measure.

   Thus it is established that the particular Idea contains in its essence
   something of good and thereby becomes a good thing; for Life we found
   to be good not in the bare being but in its derivation from the
   Authentic, the Supreme whence it sprung: and the same is true of
   Intellectual-Principle: we are forced therefore admit a certain
   identity.

   When, with all their differences, things may be affirmed to have a
   measure of identity, the matter of the identity may very well be
   established in their very essence and yet be mentally abstracted; thus
   life in man or horse yields the notion of animal; from water or fire we
   may get that of warmth; the first case is a definition of Kind, the
   other two cite qualities, primary and secondary respectively. Both or
   one part of Intellect, then, would be called by the one term good.

   Is The Good, then, inherent in the Ideas essentially? Each of them is
   good but the goodness is not that of the Unity-Good. How, then, is it
   present?

   By the mode of parts.

   But The Good is without parts?

   No doubt The Good is a unity; but here it has become particularized.
   The First Activity is good and anything determined in accord with it is
   good as also is any resultant. There is the good that is good by origin
   in The First, the good that is in an ordered system derived from that
   earlier, and the good that is in the actualization [in the thing
   participant]. Derived, then, not identical -- like the speech and walk
   and other characteristics of one man, each playing its due part.

   Here, it is obvious, goodness depends upon order, rhythm, but what
   equivalent exists There?

   We might answer that in the case of the sense-order, too, the good is
   imposed since the ordering is of things different from the Orderer but
   that There the very things are good.

   But why are they thus good in themselves? We cannot be content with the
   conviction of their goodness on the ground of their origin in that
   realm: we do not deny that things deriving Thence are good, but our
   subject demands that we discover the mode by which they come to possess
   that goodness.

   19. Are we to rest all on pursuit and on the soul? Is it enough to put
   faith in the soul's choice and call that good which the soul pursues,
   never asking ourselves the motive of its choice? We marshal
   demonstration as to the nature of everything else; is the good to be
   dismissed as choice?

   Several absurdities would be entailed. The good becomes a mere
   attribute of things; objects of pursuit are many and different so that
   mere choice gives no assurance that the thing chosen is the best; in
   fact, we cannot know the best until we know the good.

   Are we to determine the good by the respective values of things?

   This is to make Idea and Reason-Principle the test: all very well; but
   arrived at these, what explanation have we to give as to why Idea and
   Reason-Principle themselves are good? In the lower, we recognise
   goodness -- in its less perfect form -- by comparison with what is
   poorer still; we are without a standard There where no evil exists, the
   Bests holding the field alone. Reason demands to know what constitutes
   goodness; those principles are good in their own nature and we are left
   in perplexity because cause and fact are identical: and even though we
   should state a cause, the doubt still remains until our reason claims
   its rights There. But we need not abandon the search; another path may
   lead to the light.

   20. Since we are not entitled to make desire the test by which to
   decide on the nature and quality of the good, we may perhaps have
   recourse to judgement.

   We would apply the opposition of things -- order, disorder; symmetry,
   irregularity; health, illness; form, shapelessness; real-being, decay:
   in a word continuity against dissolution. The first in each pair, no
   one could doubt, belong to the concept of good and therefore whatever
   tends to produce them must be ranged on the good side.

   Thus virtue and Intellectual-Principle and life and soul -- reasoning
   soul, at least -- belong to the idea of good and so therefore does all
   that a reasoned life aims at.

   Why not halt, then -- it will be asked -- at Intellectual-Principle and
   make that The Good? Soul and life are traces of Intellectual-Principle;
   that principle is the Term of Soul which on judgement sets itself
   towards Intellectual-Principle, pronouncing right preferable to wrong
   and virtue in every form to vice, and thus ranking by its choosing.

   The soul aiming only at that Principle would need a further lessoning;
   it must be taught that Intellectual-Principle is not the ultimate, that
   not all things look to that while all do look to the good. Not all that
   is outside of Intellectual-Principle seeks to attain it; what has
   attained it does not halt there but looks still towards good. Besides,
   Intellectual-Principle is sought upon motives of reasoning, the good
   before all reason. And in any striving towards life and continuity of
   existence and activity, the object is aimed at not as
   Intellectual-Principle but as good, as rising from good and leading to
   it: life itself is desirable only in view of good.

   21. Now what in all these objects of desire is the fundamental making
   them good?

   We must be bold:

   Intellectual-Principle and that life are of the order of good and hold
   their desirability, even they, in virtue of belonging to that order;
   they have their goodness, I mean, because Life is an Activity in The
   Good, -- Or rather, streaming from The Good -- while
   Intellectual-Principle is an Activity already defined Therein; both are
   of radiant beauty and, because they come Thence and lead Thither, they
   are sought after by the soul-sought, that is, as things congenial
   though not veritably good while yet, as belonging to that order not to
   be rejected; the related, if not good, is shunned in spite of that
   relationship, and even remote and ignobler things may at times prove
   attractive.

   The intense love called forth by Life and Intellectual-Principle is due
   not to what they are but to the consideration of their nature as
   something apart, received from above themselves.

   Material forms, containing light incorporated in them, need still a
   light apart from them that their own light may be manifest; just so the
   Beings of that sphere, all lightsome, need another and a lordlier light
   or even they would not be visible to themselves and beyond.

   22. That light known, then indeed we are stirred towards those Beings
   in longing and rejoicing over the radiance about them, just as earthly
   love is not for the material form but for the Beauty manifested upon
   it. Every one of those Beings exists for itself but becomes an object
   of desire by the colour cast upon it from The Good, source of those
   graces and of the love they evoke. The soul taking that outflow from
   the divine is stirred; seized with a Bacchic passion, goaded by these
   goads, it becomes Love. Before that, even Intellectual-Principle with
   all its loveliness did not stir the soul; for that beauty is dead until
   it take the light of The Good, and the soul lies supine, cold to all,
   unquickened even to Intellectual-Principle there before it. But when
   there enters into it a glow from the divine, it gathers strength,
   awakens, spreads true wings, and however urged by its nearer
   environing, speeds its buoyant way elsewhere, to something greater to
   its memory: so long as there exists anything loftier than the near, its
   very nature bears it upwards, lifted by the giver of that love. Beyond
   Intellectual-Principle it passes but beyond The Good it cannot, for
   nothing stands above That. Let it remain in Intellectual-Principle and
   it sees the lovely and august, but it is not there possessed of all it
   sought; the face it sees is beautiful no doubt but not of power to hold
   its gaze because lacking in the radiant grace which is the bloom upon
   beauty.

   Even here we have to recognise that beauty is that which irradiates
   symmetry rather than symmetry itself and is that which truly calls out
   our love.

   Why else is there more of the glory of beauty upon the living and only
   some faint trace of it upon the dead, though the face yet retains all
   its fulness and symmetry? Why are the most living portraits the most
   beautiful, even though the others happen to be more symmetric? Why is
   the living ugly more attractive than the sculptured handsome? It is
   that the one is more nearly what we are looking for, and this because
   there is soul there, because there is more of the Idea of The Good,
   because there is some glow of the light of The Good and this
   illumination awakens and lifts the soul and all that goes with it so
   that the whole man is won over to goodness, and in the fullest measure
   stirred to life.

   23. That which soul must quest, that which sheds its light upon
   Intellectual-Principle, leaving its mark wherever it falls, surely we
   need not wonder that it be of power to draw to itself, calling back
   from every wandering to rest before it. From it came all, and so there
   is nothing mightier; all is feeble before it. Of all things the best,
   must it not be The Good? If by The Good we mean the principle most
   wholly self-sufficing, utterly without need of any other, what can it
   be but this? Before all the rest, it was what it was, when evil had yet
   no place in things.

   If evil is a Later, there found where there is no trace of This --
   among the very ultimates, so that on the downward side evil has no
   beyond -- then to This evil stands full contrary with no linking
   intermediate: This therefore is The Good: either good there is none, or
   if there must be, This and no other is it.

   And to deny the good would be to deny evil also; there can then be no
   difference in objects coming up for choice: but that is untenable.

   To This looks all else that passes for good; This, to nothing.

   What then does it effect out of its greatness?

   It has produced Intellectual-Principle, it has produced Life, the souls
   which Intellectual-Principle sends forth and everything else that
   partakes of Reason, of Intellectual-Principle or of Life. Source and
   spring of so much, how describe its goodness and greatness?

   But what does it effect now?

   Even now it is preserver of what it produced; by it the Intellectual
   Beings have their Intellection and the living their life; it breathes
   Intellect in breathes Life in and, where life is impossible, existence.

   24. But ourselves -- how does it touch us?

   We may recall what we have said of the nature of the light shining from
   it into Intellectual-Principle and so by participation into the soul.
   But for the moment let us leave that aside and put another question:

   Does The Good hold that nature and name because some outside thing
   finds it desirable? May we put it that a thing desirable to one is good
   to that one and that what is desirable to all is to be recognised as
   The Good?

   No doubt this universal questing would make the goodness evident but
   still there must be in the nature something to earn that name.

   Further, is the questing determined by the hope of some acquisition or
   by sheer delight? If there is acquisition, what is it? If it is a
   matter of delight, why here rather than in something else?

   The question comes to this: Is goodness in the appropriate or in
   something apart, and is The Good good as regards itself also or good
   only as possessed?

   Any good is such, necessarily, not for itself but for something
   outside.

   But to what nature is This good? There is a nature to which nothing is
   good.

   And we must not overlook what some surly critic will surely bring up
   against us:

   What's all this: you scatter praises here, there and everywhere: Life
   is good, Intellectual-Principle is good: and yet The Good is above
   them; how then can Intellectual-Principle itself be good? Or what do we
   gain by seeing the Ideas themselves if we see only a particular Idea
   and nothing else [nothing "substantial"]? If we are happy here we may
   be deceived into thinking life a good when it is merely pleasant; but
   suppose our lot unhappy, why should we speak of good? Is mere personal
   existence good? What profit is there in it? What is the advantage in
   existence over utter non-existence -- unless goodness is to be founded
   upon our love of self? It is the deception rooted in the nature of
   things and our dread of dissolution that lead to all the "goods" of
   your positing.

   25. It is in view, probably, of this difficulty that Plato, in the
   Philebus, makes pleasure an element in the Term; the good is not
   defined as a simplex or set in Intellectual-Principle alone; while he
   rightly refrains from identifying the good with the pleasant, yet he
   does not allow Intellectual-Principle, foreign to pleasure, to be The
   Good, since he sees no attractive power in it. He may also have had in
   mind that the good, to answer to its name, must be a thing of delight
   and that an object of pursuit must at least hold some pleasure for
   those that acquire and possess it, so that where there is no joy the
   good too is absent, further that pleasure, implying pursuit, cannot
   pertain to the First and that therefore good cannot.

   All this was very well; there the enquiry was not as to the Primal Good
   but as to ours; the good dealt with in that passage pertains to very
   different beings and therefore is a different good; it is a good
   falling short of that higher; it is a mingled thing; we are to
   understand that good does not hold place in the One and Alone whose
   being is too great and different for that.

   The good must, no doubt, be a thing pursued, not, however, good because
   it is pursued but pursued because it is good.

   The solution, it would seem, lies in priority:

   To the lowest of things the good is its immediate higher; each step
   represents the good to what stands lower so long as the movement does
   not tend awry but advances continuously towards the superior: thus
   there is a halt at the Ultimate, beyond which no ascent is possible:
   that is the First Good, the authentic, the supremely sovereign, the
   source of good to the rest of things.

   Matter would have Forming-Idea for its good, since, were it conscious,
   it would welcome that; body would look to soul, without which it could
   not be or endure; soul must look to virtue; still higher stands
   Intellectual-Principle; above that again is the principle we call the
   Primal. Each of these progressive priors must have act upon those
   minors to which they are, respectively, the good: some will confer
   order and place, others life, others wisdom and the good life:
   Intellectual-Principle will draw upon the Authentic Good which we hold
   to be coterminous with it, both as being an Activity put forth from it
   and as even now taking light from it. This good we will define later.

   26. Any conscious being, if the good come to him, will know the good
   and affirm his possession of it.

   But what if one be deceived?

   In that case there must be some resemblance to account for the error:
   the good will be the original which the delusion counterfeited and
   whenever the true presents itself we turn from the spurious.

   All the striving, all the pain, show that to everything something is a
   good: the lifeless finds its share in something outside itself; where
   there is life the longing for good sets up pursuit; the very dead are
   cared for and mourned for by the living; the living plan for their own
   good. The witness of attainment is betterment, cleaving to state,
   satisfaction, settlement, suspension of pursuit. Here pleasure shows
   itself inadequate; its choice does not hold; repeated, it is no longer
   the same; it demands endless novelty. The good, worthy of the name, can
   be no such tasting of the casual; anyone that takes this kind of thing
   for the good goes empty, carrying away nothing but an emotion which the
   good might have produced. No one could be content to take his pleasure
   thus in an emotion over a thing not possessed any more than over a
   child not there; I cannot think that those setting their good in bodily
   satisfactions find table-pleasure without the meal, or love-pleasure
   without intercourse with their chosen, or any pleasure where nothing is
   done.

   27. But what is that whose entry supplies every such need?

   Some Idea, we maintain. There is a Form to which Matter aspires: to
   soul, moral excellence is this Form.

   But is this Form a good to the thing as being apt to it, does the
   striving aim at the apt?

   No: the aptest would be the most resemblant to the thing itself, but
   that, however sought and welcomed, does not suffice for the good: the
   good must be something more: to be a good to another a thing must have
   something beyond aptness; that only can be adopted as the good which
   represents the apt in its better form and is best to what is best in
   the quester's self, to that which the quester tends potentially to be.

   A thing is potentially that to which its nature looks; this, obviously,
   it lacks; what it lacks, of its better, is its good. Matter is of all
   that most in need; its next is the lowest Form; Form at lowest is just
   one grade higher than Matter. If a thing is a good to itself, much more
   must its perfection, its Form, its better, be a good to it; this
   better, good in its own nature, must be good also to the quester whose
   good it procures.

   But why should the Form which makes a thing good be a good to that
   thing? As being most appropriate?

   No: but because it is, itself, a portion of the Good. This is why the
   least alloyed and nearest to the good are most at peace within
   themselves.

   It is surely out of place to ask why a thing good in its own nature
   should be a good; we can hardly suppose it dissatisfied with its own
   goodness so that it must strain outside its essential quality to the
   good which it effectually is.

   There remains the question with regard to the Simplex: where there is
   utter absence of distinction does this self-aptness constitute the good
   to that Simplex?

   If thus far we have been right, the striving of the lower possesses
   itself of the good as of a thing resident in a certain Kind, and it is
   not the striving that constitutes the good but the good that calls out
   the striving: where the good is attained something is acquired and on
   this acquisition there follows pleasure. But the thing must be chosen
   even though no pleasure ensued; it must be desirable for its own sake.

   28. Now to see what all this reasoning has established:

   Universally, what approaches as a good is a Form; Matter itself
   contains this good which is Form: are we to conclude that, if Matter
   had will, it would desire to be Form unalloyed?

   No: that would be desiring its own destruction, for the good seeks to
   subject everything to itself. But perhaps Matter would not wish to
   remain at its own level but would prefer to attain Being and, this
   acquired, to lay aside its evil.

   If we are asked how the evil thing can have tendency towards the good,
   we answer that we have not attributed tendency to Matter; our argument
   needed the hypothesis of sensation in Matter -- in so far as possible
   consistently with retention of its character -- and we asserted that
   the entry of Form, that dream of the Good, must raise it to a nobler
   order. If then Matter is Evil, there is no more to be said; if it is
   something else -- a wrong thing, let us say -- then in the hypothesis
   that its essence acquire sensation would not the appropriate upon the
   next or higher plane be its good, as in the other cases? But not what
   is evil in Matter would be the quester of good but that element in it
   [lowest Form] which in it is associated with evil.

   But if Matter by very essence is evil how could it choose the good?

   This question implies that if Evil were self-conscious it would admire
   itself: but how can the unadmirable be admired; and did we not discover
   that the good must be apt to the nature?

   There that question may rest. But if universally the good is Form and
   the higher the ascent the more there is of Form-Soul more truly Form
   than body is and phases of soul progressively of higher Form and
   Intellectual-Principle standing as Form to soul collectively -- then
   the Good advances by the opposite of Matter and, therefore, by a
   cleansing and casting away to the utmost possible at each stage: and
   the greatest good must be there where all that is of Matter has
   disappeared. The Principle of Good rejecting Matter entirely -- or
   rather never having come near it at any point or in any way -- must
   hold itself aloft with that Formless in which Primal Form takes its
   origin. But we will return to this.

   29. Suppose, however, that pleasure did not result from the good but
   there were something preceding pleasure and accounting for it, would
   not this be a thing to be embraced?

   But when we say "to be embraced" we say "pleasure."

   But what if accepting its existence, we think of that existence as
   leaving still the possibility that it were not a thing to be embraced?

   This would mean the good being present and the sentient possessor
   failing, nonetheless, to perceive it.

   It would seem possible, however, to perceive and yet be unmoved by the
   possession; this is quite likely in the case of the wiser and least
   dependent -- and indeed it is so with the First, immune not merely
   because simplex, but because pleasure by acquisition implies lack.

   But all this will become clear on the solution of our remaining
   difficulties and the rebuttal of the argument brought up against us.
   This takes the form of the question: "What gain is there in the Good to
   one who, fully conscious, feels nothing when he hears of these things,
   whether because he has no grasp of them but takes merely the words or
   because he holds to false values, perhaps being all in search of sense,
   finding his good in money or such things?"

   The answer is that even in his disregard of the good proposed he is
   with us in setting a good before him but fails to see how the good we
   define fits into his own conception. It is impossible to say "Not that"
   if one is utterly without experience or conception of the "That"; there
   will generally have been, even, some inkling of the good beyond
   Intellection. Besides, one attaining or approaching the good, but not
   recognising it, may assure himself in the light of its contraries;
   otherwise he will not even hold ignorance an evil though everyone
   prefers to know and is proud of knowing so that our very sensations
   seek to ripen into knowledge.

   If the knowing principle -- and specially primal Intellectual-Principle
   -- is valuable and beautiful, what must be present to those of power to
   see the Author and Father of Intellect? Anyone thinking slightingly of
   this principle of Life and Being brings evidence against himself and
   all his state: of course, distaste for the life that is mingled with
   death does not touch that Life Authentic.

   30. Whether pleasure must enter into the good, so that life in the
   contemplation of the divine things and especially of their source
   remains still imperfect, is a question not to be ignored in any enquiry
   into the nature of the good.

   Now to found the good upon the Intellect and upon that state of soul or
   mind which springs from wisdom does not imply that the end or the
   absolute good is the conjunction [of Intellect and state]: it would
   follow merely that Intellect is the good and that we feel happy in
   possession of that good. That is one theory; another associates
   pleasure with Intellect in the sense that the Good is taken to be some
   one thing founded upon both but depending upon our attaining or at
   least contemplating an Intellect so modified; this theory would
   maintain that the isolated and unrelated could be the good, could be an
   object of desire.

   But how could Intellect and pleasure combine into one mutually
   complementary nature?

   Bodily pleasure no one, certainly, would think capable of blending in
   with Intellect; the unreasoning satisfactions of soul [or lower mind]
   are equally incompatible with it.

   Every activity, state, and life, will be followed and as it were
   escorted by the over-dwelling consciousness; sometimes as these take
   their natural course they will be met by hindrance and by intrusion of
   the conflicting so that the life is the less self-guided; sometimes the
   natural activity is unmixed, wholly free, and then the life goes
   brilliantly; this last state is judged the pleasantest, the most to be
   chosen; so, for lack of an accurate expression, we hear of "Intellect
   in conjunction with pleasure." But this is no more than metaphor, like
   a hundred others drawn by the poets from our natural likings -- "Drunk
   with nectar," "To banquet and feast," "The Father smiled." No: the
   veritably pleasant lies away in that other realm, the most to be loved
   and sought for, not something brought about and changing but the very
   principle of all the colour and radiance and brightness found here.
   This is why we read of "Truth introduced into the Mixture" and of the
   "measuring standard as a prior condition" and are told that the
   symmetry and beauty necessary to the Mixture come Thence into whatever
   has beauty; it is in this way that we have our share in Beauty; but in
   another way, also, we achieve the truly desirable, that is by leading
   our selves up to what is best within us; this best is what is symmetry,
   beauty, collective Idea, life clear, Intellective and good.

   31. But since Thence come the beauty and light in all, it is Thence
   that Intellectual-Principle took the brilliance of the Intellectual
   Energy which flashed Nature into being; Thence soul took power towards
   life, in virtue of that fuller life streaming into it.
   Intellectual-Principle was raised thus to that Supreme and remains with
   it, happy in that presence. Soul too, that soul which as possessing
   knowledge and vision was capable, clung to what it saw; and as its
   vision so its rapture; it saw and was stricken; but having in itself
   something of that principle it felt its kinship and was moved to
   longing like those stirred by the image of the beloved to desire of the
   veritable presence. Lovers here mould themselves to the beloved; they
   seek to increase their attraction of person and their likeness of mind;
   they are unwilling to fall short in moral quality or in other graces
   lest they be distasteful to those possessing such merit -- and only
   among such can true love be. In the same way the soul loves the Supreme
   Good, from its very beginnings stirred by it to love. The soul which
   has never strayed from this love waits for no reminding from the beauty
   of our world: holding that love -- perhaps unawares -- it is ever in
   quest, and, in its longing to be borne Thither, passes over what is
   lovely here and with one glance at the beauty of the universe dismisses
   all; for it sees that all is put together of flesh and Matter, befouled
   by its housing, made fragmentary by corporal extension, not the
   Authentic Beauty which could never venture into the mud of body to be
   soiled, annulled.

   By only noting the flux of things it knows at once that from elsewhere
   comes the beauty that floats upon them and so it is urged Thither,
   passionate in pursuit of what it loves: never -- unless someone robs it
   of that love -- never giving up till it attain.

   There indeed all it saw was beautiful and veritable; it grew in
   strength by being thus filled with the life of the True; itself
   becoming veritable Being and attaining veritable knowledge, it enters
   by that neighbouring into conscious possession of what it has long been
   seeking.

   32. Where, then? where exists the author of this beauty and life, the
   begetter of the veritable?

   You see the splendour over the things of the universe with all the
   variety begotten of the Ideas; well might we linger here: but amid all
   these things of beauty we cannot but ask whence they come and whence
   the beauty. This source can be none of the beautiful objects; were it
   so, it too would be a thing of parts. It can be no shape, no power, nor
   the total of powers and shapes that have had the becoming that has set
   them here; it must stand above all the powers, all the patterns. The
   origin of all this must be the formless -- formless not as lacking
   shape but as the very source of even shape Intellectual.

   In the realm of process anything coming to be must come to be
   something; to every thing its distinctive shape: but what shape can
   that have which no one has shaped? It can be none of existing things;
   yet it is all: none, in that beings are later; all, as the wellspring
   from which they flow. That which can make all can have, itself, no
   extension; it must be limitless and so without magnitude; magnitude
   itself is of the Later and cannot be an element in that which is to
   bring it into being. The greatness of the Authentic cannot be a
   greatness of quantity; all extension must belong to the subsequent: the
   Supreme is great in the sense only that there can be nothing mightier,
   nothing to equal it, nothing with anything in common with it: how then
   could anything be equal to any part of its content? Its eternity and
   universal reach entail neither measure nor measurelessness; given
   either, how could it be the measure of things? So with shape: granted
   beauty, the absence of shape or form to be grasped is but enhancement
   of desire and love; the love will be limitless as the object is, an
   infinite love.

   Its beauty, too, will be unique, a beauty above beauty: it cannot be
   beauty since it is not a thing among things. It is lovable and the
   author of beauty; as the power to all beautiful shape, it will be the
   ultimate of beauty, that which brings all loveliness to be; it begets
   beauty and makes it yet more beautiful by the excess of beauty
   streaming from itself, the source and height of beauty. As the source
   of beauty it makes beautiful whatsoever springs from it. And this
   conferred beauty is not itself in shape; the thing that comes to be is
   without shape, though in another sense shaped; what is denoted by shape
   is, in itself, an attribute of something else, shapeless at first. Not
   the beauty but its participant takes the shape.

   33. When therefore we name beauty, all such shape must be dismissed;
   nothing visible is to be conceived, or at once we descend from beauty
   to what but bears the name in virtue of some faint participation. This
   formless Form is beautiful as Form, beautiful in proportion as we strip
   away all shape even that given in thought to mark difference, as for
   instance the difference between Justice and Sophrosyne, beautiful in
   their difference.

   The Intellectual-Principle is the less for seeing things as distinct
   even in its act of grasping in unity the multiple content of its
   Intellectual realm; in its knowing of the particular it possesses
   itself of one Intellectual shape; but, even thus, in this dealing with
   variety as unity, it leaves us still with the question how we are to
   envisage that which stands beyond this all-lovely, beyond this
   principle at once multiple and above multiplicity, the Supreme for
   which the soul hungers though unable to tell why such a being should
   stir its longing-reason, however, urging that This at last is the
   Authentic Term because the Nature best and most to be loved may be
   found there only where there is no least touch of Form. Bring something
   under Form and present it so before the mind; immediately we ask what
   Beyond imposed that shape; reason answers that while there exists the
   giver having shape to give -- a giver that is shape, idea, an entirely
   measured thing -- yet this is not alone, is not adequate in itself, is
   not beautiful in its own right but is a mingled thing. Shape and idea
   and measure will always be beautiful, but the Authentic Beauty and the
   Beyond-Beauty cannot be under measure and therefore cannot have
   admitted shape or be Idea: the primal existent, The First, must be
   without Form; the beauty in it must be, simply, the Nature of the
   Intellectual Good.

   Take an example from love: so long as the attention is upon the visible
   form, love has not entered: when from that outward form the lover
   elaborates within himself, in his own partless soul, an immaterial
   image, then it is that love is born, then the lover longs for the sight
   of the beloved to make that fading image live again. If he could but
   learn to look elsewhere, to the more nearly formless, his longing would
   be for that: his first experience was loving a great luminary by way of
   some thin gleam from it.

   Shape is an impress from the unshaped; it is the unshaped that produces
   shape, not shape the unshaped; and Matter is needed for the producing;
   Matter, in the nature of things, is the furthest away, since of itself
   it has not even the lowest degree of shape. Thus lovableness does not
   belong to Matter but to that which draws upon Form: the Form upon
   Matter comes by way of soul; soul is more nearly Form and therefore
   more lovable; Intellectual-Principle, nearer still, is even more to be
   loved: by these steps we are led to know that the First Principle,
   principle of Beauty, must be formless.

   34. No longer can we wonder that the principle evoking such longing
   should be utterly free from shape. The very soul, once it has conceived
   the straining love towards this, lays aside all the shape it has taken,
   even to the Intellectual shape that has informed it. There is no
   vision, no union, for those handling or acting by any thing other; the
   soul must see before it neither evil nor good nor anything else, that
   alone it may receive the Alone.

   Suppose the soul to have attained: the highest has come to her, or
   rather has revealed its presence; she has turned away from all about
   her and made herself apt, beautiful to the utmost, brought into
   likeness with the divine by those preparings and adornings which come
   unbidden to those growing ready for the vision -- she has seen that
   presence suddenly manifesting within her, for there is nothing between:
   here is no longer a duality but a two in one; for, so long as the
   presence holds, all distinction fades: it is as lover and beloved here,
   in a copy of that union, long to blend; the soul has now no further
   awareness of being in body and will give herself no foreign name, not
   "man," not "living being," not "being," not "all"; any observation of
   such things falls away; the soul has neither time nor taste for them;
   This she sought and This she has found and on This she looks and not
   upon herself; and who she is that looks she has not leisure to know.
   Once There she will barter for This nothing the universe holds; not
   though one would make over the heavens entire to her; than This there
   is nothing higher, nothing of more good; above This there is no
   passing; all the rest, however lofty, lies on the downgoing path: she
   is of perfect judgement and knows that This was her quest, that nothing
   higher is. Here can be no deceit; where could she come upon truer than
   the truth? and the truth she affirms, that she is, herself; but all the
   affirmation is later and is silent. In this happiness she knows beyond
   delusion that she is happy; for this is no affirmation of an excited
   body but of a soul become again what she was in the time of her early
   joy. All that she had welcomed of old-office, power, wealth, beauty,
   knowledge of all she tells her scorn as she never could had she not
   found their better; linked to This she can fear no disaster nor even
   know it; let all about her fall to pieces, so she would have it that
   she may be wholly with This, so huge the happiness she has won to.

   35. Such in this union is the soul's temper that even the act of
   Intellect, once so intimately loved, she now dismisses; Intellection is
   movement and she has no wish to move; she has nothing to say of this
   very Intellectual-Principle by means of which she has attained the
   vision, herself made over into Intellectual-Principle and becoming that
   principle so as to be able to take stand in that Intellectual space.
   Entered there and making herself over to that, she at first
   contemplates that realm, but once she sees that higher still she leaves
   all else aside. Thus when a man enters a house rich in beauty he might
   gaze about and admire the varied splendour before the master appears;
   but, face to face with that great person -- no thing of ornament but
   calling for the truest attention -- he would ignore everything else and
   look only to the master. In this state of absorbed contemplation there
   is no longer question of holding an object: the vision is continuous so
   that seeing and seen are one thing; object and act of vision have
   become identical; of all that until then filled the eye no memory
   remains. And our comparison would be closer if instead of a man
   appearing to the visitor who had been admiring the house it were a god,
   and not a god manifesting to the eyes but one filling the soul.

   Intellectual-Principle, thus, has two powers, first that of grasping
   intellectively its own content, the second that of an advancing and
   receiving whereby to know its transcendent; at first it sees, later by
   that seeing it takes possession of Intellectual-Principle, becoming one
   only thing with that: the first seeing is that of Intellect knowing,
   the second that of Intellect loving; stripped of its wisdom in the
   intoxication of the nectar, it comes to love; by this excess it is made
   simplex and is happy; and to be drunken is better for it than to be too
   staid for these revels.

   But is its vision parcelwise, thing here and thing there?

   No: reason unravelling gives process; Intellectual-Principle has
   unbroken knowledge and has, moreover, an Act unattended by knowing, a
   vision by another approach. In this seeing of the Supreme it becomes
   pregnant and at once knows what has come to be within it; its knowledge
   of its content is what is designated by its Intellection; its knowing
   of the Supreme is the virtue of that power within it by which, in a
   later [lower] stage it is to become "Intellective."

   As for soul, it attains that vision by -- so to speak -- confounding
   and annulling the Intellectual-Principle within it; or rather that
   Principle immanent in soul sees first and thence the vision penetrates
   to soul and the two visions become one.

   The Good spreading out above them and adapting itself to that union
   which it hastens to confirm is present to them as giver of a blessed
   sense and sight; so high it lifts them that they are no longer in space
   or in that realm of difference where everything is rooted in some other
   thing; for The Good is not in place but is the container of the
   Intellectual place; The Good is in nothing but itself.

   The soul now knows no movement since the Supreme knows none; it is now
   not even soul since the Supreme is not in life but above life; it is no
   longer Intellectual-Principle, for the Supreme has not Intellection and
   the likeness must be perfect; this grasping is not even by
   Intellection, for the Supreme is not known Intellectively.

   36. We need not carry this matter further; we turn to a question
   already touched but demanding still some brief consideration.

   Knowledge of The Good or contact with it, is the all-important: this --
   we read -- is the grand learning, the learning we are to understand,
   not of looking towards it but attaining, first, some knowledge of it.
   We come to this learning by analogies, by abstractions, by our
   understanding of its subsequents, of all that is derived from The Good,
   by the upward steps towards it. Purification has The Good for goal; so
   the virtues, all right ordering, ascent within the Intellectual,
   settlement therein, banqueting upon the divine -- by these methods one
   becomes, to self and to all else, at once seen and seer; identical with
   Being and Intellectual-Principle and the entire living all, we no
   longer see the Supreme as an external; we are near now, the next is
   That and it is close at hand, radiant above the Intellectual.

   Here, we put aside all the learning; disciplined to this pitch,
   established in beauty, the quester holds knowledge still of the ground
   he rests on but, suddenly, swept beyond it all by the very crest of the
   wave of Intellect surging beneath, he is lifted and sees, never knowing
   how; the vision floods the eyes with light, but it is not a light
   showing some other object, the light is itself the vision. No longer is
   there thing seen and light to show it, no longer Intellect and object
   of Intellection; this is the very radiance that brought both Intellect
   and Intellectual object into being for the later use and allowed them
   to occupy the quester's mind. With This he himself becomes identical,
   with that radiance whose Act is to engender Intellectual-Principle, not
   losing in that engendering but for ever unchanged, the engendered
   coming to be simply because that Supreme exists. If there were no such
   principle above change, no derivative could rise.

   37. Those ascribing Intellection to the First have not supposed him to
   know the lesser, the emanant -- though, indeed, some have thought it
   impossible that he should not know everything. But those denying his
   knowing of the lesser have still attributed self-knowing to him,
   because they find nothing nobler; we are to suppose that so he is the
   more august, as if Intellection were something nobler than his own
   manner of being not something whose value derives from him.

   But we ask in what must his grandeur lie, in his Intellection or in
   himself. If in the Intellection, he has no worth or the less worth; if
   in himself, he is perfect before the Intellection, not perfected by it.
   We may be told that he must have Intellection because he is an Act, not
   a potentiality. Now if this means that he is an essence eternally
   intellective, he is represented as a duality -- essence and
   Intellective Act -- he ceases to be a simplex; an external has been
   added: it is just as the eyes are not the same as their sight, though
   the two are inseparable. If on the other hand by this actualization it
   is meant that he is Act and Intellection, then as being Intellection he
   does not exercise it, just as movement is not itself in motion.

   But do not we ourselves assert that the Beings There are essence and
   Act?

   The Beings, yes, but they are to us manifold and differentiated: the
   First we make a simplex; to us Intellection begins with the emanant in
   its seeking of its essence, of itself, of its author; bent inward for
   this vision and having a present thing to know, there is every reason
   why it should be a principle of Intellection; but that which, never
   coming into being, has no prior but is ever what it is, how could that
   have motive to Intellection? As Plato rightly says, it is above
   Intellect.

   An Intelligence not exercising Intellection would be unintelligent;
   where the nature demands knowing, not to know is to fail of
   intelligence; but where there is no function, why import one and
   declare a defect because it is not performed? We might as well complain
   because the Supreme does not act as a physician. He has no task, we
   hold, because nothing can present itself to him to be done; he is
   sufficient; he need seek nothing beyond himself, he who is over all; to
   himself and to all he suffices by simply being what he is.

   38. And yet this "He Is" does not truly apply: the Supreme has no need
   of Being: even "He is good" does not apply since it indicates Being:
   the "is" should not suggest something predicated of another thing; it
   is to state identity. The word "good" used of him is not a predicate
   asserting his possession of goodness; it conveys an identification. It
   is not that we think it exact to call him either good or The Good: it
   is that sheer negation does not indicate; we use the term The Good to
   assert identity without the affirmation of Being.

   But how admit a Principle void of self-knowledge, self-awareness;
   surely the First must be able to say "I possess Being?"

   But he does not possess Being.

   Then, at least he must say "I am good?"

   No: once more, that would be an affirmation of Being.

   But surely he may affirm merely the goodness, adding nothing: the
   goodness would be taken without the being and all duality avoided?

   No: such self-awareness as good must inevitably carry the affirmation
   "I am the Good"; otherwise there would be merely the unattached
   conception of goodness with no recognition of identity; any such
   intellection would inevitably include the affirmation "I am."

   If that intellection were the Good, then the intellection would not be
   self-intellection but intellection of the Good; not the Supreme but
   that intellection would be the Good: if on the contrary that
   intellection of the Good is distinct from the Good, at once the Good
   exists before its knowing; all-sufficiently good in itself, it needs
   none of that knowing of its own nature.

   Thus the Supreme does not know itself as Good.

   As what then?

   No such foreign matter is present to it: it can have only an immediate
   intuition self-directed.

   39. Since the Supreme has no interval, no self-differentiation what can
   have this intuitional approach to it but itself? Therefore it quite
   naturally assumes difference at the point where Intellectual-Principle
   and Being are differentiated.

   Intellect, to act at all, must inevitably comport difference with
   identity; otherwise it could not distinguish itself from its object by
   standing apart from it, nor could it ever be aware of the realm of
   things whose existence demands otherness, nor could there be so much as
   a duality.

   Again, if the Supreme is to have intellection it cannot know only
   itself; that would not be intellection, for, if it did know itself,
   nothing could prevent it knowing all things; but this is impossible.
   With self-intellection it would no longer be simplex; any intellection,
   even in the Supreme, must be aware of something distinct; as we have
   been saying, the inability to see the self as external is the negation
   of intellection. That act requires a manifold-agent, object, movement
   and all the other conditions of a thinking principle. Further we must
   remember what has been indicated elsewhere that, since every
   intellectual act in order to be what it must be requires variety, every
   movement simple and the same throughout, though it may comport some
   form of contact, is devoid of the intellective.

   It follows that the Supreme will know neither itself nor anything else
   but will hold an august repose. All the rest is later; before them all,
   This was what This was; any awareness of that other would be acquired,
   the shifting knowledge of the instable. Even in knowing the stable he
   would be manifold, for it is not possible that, while in the act of
   knowing the laters possess themselves of their object, the Supreme
   should know only in some unpossessing observation.

   As regards Providence, that is sufficiently saved by the fact that This
   is the source from which all proceeds; the dependent he cannot know
   when he has no knowledge of himself but keeps that august repose. Plato
   dealing with essential Being allows it intellection but not this august
   repose: intellection then belongs to Essential Being; this august
   repose to the Principle in which there is no intellection. Repose, of
   course, is used here for want of a fitter word; we are to understand
   that the most august, the truly so, is That which transcends [the
   movement of] Intellection.

   40. That there can be no intellection in the First will be patent to
   those that have had such contact; but some further confirmation is
   desirable, if indeed words can carry the matter; we need overwhelming
   persuasion.

   It must be borne in mind that all intellection rises in some principle
   and takes cognisance of an object. But a distinction is to be made:

   There is the intellection that remains within its place of origin; it
   has that source as substratum but becomes a sort of addition to it in
   that it is an activity of that source perfecting the potentiality
   there, not by producing anything but as being a completing power to the
   principle in which it inheres. There is also the intellection inbound
   with Being -- Being's very author -- and this could not remain confined
   to the source since there it could produce nothing; it is a power to
   production; it produces therefore of its own motion and its act is
   Real-Being and there it has its dwelling. In this mode the intellection
   is identical with Being; even in its self-intellection no distinction
   is made save the logical distinction of thinker and thought with, as we
   have often observed, the implication of plurality.

   This is a first activity and the substance it produces is Essential
   Being; it is an image, but of an original so great that the very copy
   stands a reality. If instead of moving outward it remained with the
   First, it would be no more than some appurtenance of that First, not a
   self-standing existent.

   At the earliest activity and earliest intellection, it can be preceded
   by no act or intellection: if we pass beyond this being and this
   intellection we come not to more being and more intellection but to
   what overpasses both, to the wonderful which has neither, asking
   nothing of these products and standing its unaccompanied self.

   That all-transcending cannot have had an activity by which to produce
   this activity -- acting before act existed -- or have had thought in
   order to produce thinking -- applying thought before thought exists --
   all intellection, even of the Good, is beneath it.

   In sum, this intellection of the Good is impossible: I do not mean that
   it is impossible to have intellection of the Good -- we may admit the
   possibility but there can be no intellection by The Good itself, for
   this would be to include the inferior with the Good.

   If intellection is the lower, then it will be bound up with Being; if
   intellection is the higher, its object is lower. Intellection, then,
   does not exist in the Good; as a lesser, taking its worth through that
   Good, it must stand apart from it, leaving the Good unsoiled by it as
   by all else. Immune from intellection the Good remains incontaminably
   what it is, not impeded by the presence of the intellectual act which
   would annul its purity and unity.

   Anyone making the Good at once Thinker and Thought identifies it with
   Being and with the Intellection vested in Being so that it must perform
   that act of intellection: at once it becomes necessary to find another
   principle, one superior to that Good: for either this act, this
   intellection, is a completing power of some such principle, serving as
   its ground, or it points, by that duality, to a prior principle having
   intellection as a characteristic. It is because there is something
   before it that it has an object of intellection; even in its
   self-intellection, it may be said to know its content by its vision of
   that prior.

   What has no prior and no external accompaniment could have no
   intellection, either of itself or of anything else. What could it aim
   at, what desire? To essay its power of knowing? But this would make the
   power something outside itself; there would be, I mean, the power it
   grasped and the power by which it grasped: if there is but the one
   power, what is there to grasp at?

   41. Intellection seems to have been given as an aid to the diviner but
   weaker beings, an eye to the blind. But the eye itself need not see
   Being since it is itself the light; what must take the light through
   the eye needs the light because of its darkness. If, then, intellection
   is the light and light does not need the light, surely that brilliance
   (The First) which does not need light can have no need of intellection,
   will not add this to its nature.

   What could it do with intellection? What could even intellection need
   and add to itself for the purpose of its act? It has no self-awareness;
   there is no need. It is no duality but, rather, a manifold, consisting
   of itself, its intellective act, distinct from itself, and the
   inevitable third, the object of intellection. No doubt since knower,
   knowing, and known, are identical, all merges into a unity: but the
   distinction has existed and, once more, such a unity cannot be the
   First; we must put away all otherness from the Supreme which can need
   no such support; anything we add is so much lessening of what lacks
   nothing.

   To us intellection is a boon since the soul needs it; to the
   Intellectual-Principle it is appropriate as being one thing with the
   very essence of the principle constituted by the intellectual Act so
   that principle and act coincide in a continuous self-consciousness
   carrying the assurance of identity, of the unity of the two. But pure
   unity must be independent, in need of no such assurance.

   "Know yourself" is a precept for those who, being manifold, have the
   task of appraising themselves so as to become aware of the number and
   nature of their constituents, some or all of which they ignore as they
   ignore their very principle and their manner of being. The First on the
   contrary if it have content must exist in a way too great to have any
   knowledge, intellection, perception of it. To itself it is nothing;
   accepting nothing, self-sufficing, it is not even a good to itself: to
   others it is good for they have need of it; but it could not lack
   itself: it would be absurd to suppose The Good standing in need of
   goodness.

   It does not see itself: seeing aims at acquisition: all this it
   abandons to the subsequent: in fact nothing found elsewhere can be
   There; even Being cannot be There. Nor therefore has it intellection
   which is a thing of the lower sphere where the first intellection, the
   only true, is identical with Being. Reason, perception, intelligence,
   none of these can have place in that Principle in which no presence can
   be affirmed.

   42. Faced by the difficulty of placing these powers, you must in reason
   allocate to the secondaries what you count august: secondaries must not
   be foisted upon the First, or tertiaries upon the secondaries.
   Secondaries are to be ranged under the First, tertiaries under the
   secondaries: this is giving everything its place, the later dependent
   on their priors, those priors free.

   This is included in that true saying "About the King of All, all has
   being and in view of Him all is": we are to understand from the
   attribution of all things to Him, and from, the words "in view of Him"
   that He is their cause and they reach to Him as to something differing
   from them all and containing nothing that they contain: for certainly
   His very nature requires that nothing of the later be in Him.

   Thus, Intellectual-Principle, finding place in the universe, cannot
   have place in Him. Where we read that He is the cause of all beauty we
   are clearly to understand that beauty depends upon the Forms, He being
   set above all that is beautiful here. The Forms are in that passage
   secondaries, their sequels being attached to them as dependent thirds:
   it is clear thus that by "the products of the thirds" is meant this
   world, dependent upon soul.

   Soul dependent upon Intellectual-Principle and Intellectual-Principle
   upon the Good, all is linked to the Supreme by intermediaries, some
   close, some nearing those of the closer attachment, while the order of
   sense stands remotest, dependent upon soul.
     __________________________________________________________________

  EIGHTH TRACTATE.

  ON FREE-WILL AND THE WILL OF THE ONE.

   1. Can there be question as to whether the gods have voluntary action?
   Or are we to take it that, while we may well enquire in the case of men
   with their combination of powerlessness and hesitating power, the gods
   must be declared omnipotent, not merely some things but all lying at
   their nod? Or is power entire, freedom of action in all things, to be
   reserved to one alone, of the rest some being powerful, others
   powerless, others again a blend of power and impotence?

   All this must come to the test: we must dare it even of the Firsts and
   of the All-Transcendent and, if we find omnipotence possible, work out
   how far freedom extends. The very notion of power must be scrutinized
   lest in this ascription we be really making power identical with
   Essential Act, and even with Act not yet achieved.

   But for the moment we may pass over these questions to deal with the
   traditional problem of freedom of action in ourselves.

   To begin with, what must be intended when we assert that something is
   in our power; what is the conception here?

   To establish this will help to show whether we are to ascribe freedom
   to the gods and still more to God, or to refuse it, or again, while
   asserting it, to question still, in regard both to the higher and lower
   -- the mode of its presence.

   What then do we mean when we speak of freedom in ourselves and why do
   we question it?

   My own reading is that, moving as we do amid adverse fortunes,
   compulsions, violent assaults of passion crushing the soul, feeling
   ourselves mastered by these experiences, playing slave to them, going
   where they lead, we have been brought by all this to doubt whether we
   are anything at all and dispose of ourselves in any particular.

   This would indicate that we think of our free act as one which we
   execute of our own choice, in no servitude to chance or necessity or
   overmastering passion, nothing thwarting our will; the voluntary is
   conceived as an event amenable to will and occurring or not as our will
   dictates. Everything will be voluntary that is produced under no
   compulsion and with knowledge; our free act is what we are masters to
   perform.

   Differing conceptually, the two conditions will often coincide but
   sometimes will clash. Thus a man would be master to kill, but the act
   will not be voluntary if in the victim he had failed to recognise his
   own father. Perhaps however that ignorance is not compatible with real
   freedom: for the knowledge necessary to a voluntary act cannot be
   limited to certain particulars but must cover the entire field. Why,
   for example, should killing be involuntary in the failure to recognise
   a father and not so in the failure to recognise the wickedness of
   murder? If because the killer ought to have learned, still ignorance of
   the duty of learning and the cause of that ignorance remain alike
   involuntary.

   2. A cardinal question is where we are to place the freedom of action
   ascribed to us.

   It must be founded in impulse or in some appetite, as when we act or
   omit in lust or rage or upon some calculation of advantage accompanied
   by desire.

   But if rage or desire implied freedom we must allow freedom to animals,
   infants, maniacs, the distraught, the victims of malpractice producing
   incontrollable delusions. And if freedom turns on calculation with
   desire, does this include faulty calculation? Sound calculation, no
   doubt, and sound desire; but then comes the question whether the
   appetite stirs the calculation or the calculation the appetite.

   Where the appetites are dictated by the very nature they are the
   desires of the conjoint of soul and body and then soul lies under
   physical compulsions: if they spring in the soul as an independent,
   then much that we take to be voluntary is in reality outside of our
   free act. Further, every emotion is preceded by some meagre reasoning;
   how then can a compelling imagination, an appetite drawing us where it
   will, be supposed to leave us masters in the ensuing act? Need,
   inexorably craving satisfaction, is not free in face of that to which
   it is forced: and how at all can a thing have efficiency of its own
   when it rises from an extern, has an extern for very principle, thence
   taking its Being as it stands? It lives by that extern, lives as it has
   been moulded: if this be freedom, there is freedom in even the
   soulless; fire acts in accordance with its characteristic being.

   We may be reminded that the Living Form and the soul know what they do.
   But, if this is knowledge by perception, it does not help towards the
   freedom of the act; perception gives awareness, not mastery: if true
   knowing is meant, either this is the knowing of something happening --
   once more awareness -- with the motive -- force still to seek, or the
   reasoning and knowledge have acted to quell the appetite; then we have
   to ask to what this repression is to be referred and where it has taken
   place. If it is that the mental process sets up an opposing desire we
   must assure ourselves how; if it merely stills the appetite with no
   further efficiency and this is our freedom, then freedom does not
   depend upon act but is a thing of the mind -- and in truth all that has
   to do with act, the very most reasonable, is still of mixed value and
   cannot carry freedom.

   3. All this calls for examination; the enquiry must bring us close to
   the solution as regards the gods.

   We have traced self-disposal to will, will to reasoning and, next step,
   to right reasoning; perhaps to right reasoning we must add knowledge,
   for however sound opinion and act may be they do not yield true freedom
   when the adoption of the right course is the result of hazard or of
   some presentment from the fancy with no knowledge of the foundations of
   that rightness.

   Taking it that the presentment of fancy is not a matter of our will and
   choice, how can we think those acting at its dictation to be free
   agents? Fancy strictly, in our use, takes it rise from conditions of
   the body; lack of food and drink sets up presentments, and so does the
   meeting of these needs; similarly with seminal abundance and other
   humours of the body. We refuse to range under the principle of freedom
   those whose conduct is directed by such fancy: the baser sort,
   therefore, mainly so guided, cannot be credited with self-disposal or
   voluntary act. Self-disposal, to us, belongs to those who, through the
   activities of the Intellectual-Principle, live above the states of the
   body. The spring of freedom is the activity of Intellectual-Principle,
   the highest in our being; the proposals emanating thence are freedom;
   such desires as are formed in the exercise of the Intellectual act
   cannot be classed as involuntary; the gods, therefore, that live in
   this state, living by Intellectual-Principle and by desire conformed to
   it, possess freedom.

   4. It will be asked how act rising from desire can be voluntary, since
   desire pulls outward and implies need; to desire is still to be drawn,
   even though towards the good.

   Intellectual-Principle itself comes under the doubt; having a certain
   nature and acting by that nature can it be said to have freedom and
   self-disposal -- in an act which it cannot leave unenacted? It may be
   asked, also, whether freedom may strictly be affirmed of such beings as
   are not engaged in action.

   However that may be, where there is such act there is compulsion from
   without, since, failing motive, act will not be performed. These higher
   beings, too, obey their own nature; where then is their freedom?

   But, on the other hand, can there be talk of constraint where there is
   no compulsion to obey an extern; and how can any movement towards a
   good be counted compulsion? Effort is free once it is towards a fully
   recognised good; the involuntary is, precisely, motion away from a good
   and towards the enforced, towards something not recognised as a good;
   servitude lies in being powerless to move towards one's good, being
   debarred from the preferred path in a menial obedience. Hence the shame
   of slavedom is incurred not when one is held from the hurtful but when
   the personal good must be yielded in favour of another's.

   Further, this objected obedience to the characteristic nature would
   imply a duality, master and mastered; but an undivided Principle, a
   simplex Activity, where there can be no difference of potentiality and
   act, must be free; there can be no thought of "action according to the
   nature," in the sense of any distinction between the being and its
   efficiency, there where being and act are identical. Where act is
   performed neither because of another nor at another's will, there
   surely is freedom. Freedom may of course be an inappropriate term:
   there is something greater here: it is self-disposal in the sense,
   only, that there is no disposal by the extern, no outside master over
   the act.

   In a principle, act and essence must be free. No doubt
   Intellectual-Principle itself is to be referred to a yet higher; but
   this higher is not extern to it; Intellectual-Principle is within the
   Good; possessing its own good in virtue of that indwelling, much more
   will it possess freedom and self-disposal which are sought only for the
   sake of the good. Acting towards the good, it must all the more possess
   self-disposal for by that Act it is directed towards the Principle from
   which it proceeds, and this its act is self-centred and must entail its
   very greatest good.

   5. Are we, however, to make freedom and self-disposal exclusive to
   Intellectual-Principle as engaged in its characteristic Act,
   Intellectual-Principle unassociated, or do they belong also to soul
   acting under that guidance and performing act of virtue?

   If freedom is to be allowed to soul in its Act, it certainly cannot be
   allowed in regard to issue, for we are not master of events: if in
   regard to fine conduct and all inspired by Intellectual-Principle, that
   may very well be freedom; but is the freedom ours?

   Because there is war, we perform some brave feat; how is that our free
   act since had there been no war it could not have been performed? So in
   all cases of fine conduct; there is always some impinging event leading
   out our quality to show itself in this or that act. And suppose virtue
   itself given the choice whether to find occasion for its exercise --
   war evoking courage; wrong, so that it may establish justice and good
   order; poverty that it may show independence -- or to remain inactive,
   everything going well, it would choose the peace of inaction, nothing
   calling for its intervention, just as a physician like Hippocrates
   would prefer no one to stand in need of his skill.

   If thus virtue whose manifestation requires action becomes inevitably a
   collaborator under compulsion, how can it have untrammelled
   self-disposal?

   Should we, perhaps, distinguish between compulsion in the act and
   freedom in the preceding will and reasoning?

   But in setting freedom in those preceding functions, we imply that
   virtue has a freedom and self-disposal apart from all act; then we must
   state what is the reality of the self-disposal attributed to virtue as
   state or disposition. Are we to put it that virtue comes in to restore
   the disordered soul, taming passions and appetites? In what sense, at
   that, can we hold our goodness to be our own free act, our fine conduct
   to be uncompelled? In that we will and adopt, in that this entry of
   virtue prepares freedom and self-disposal, ending our slavery to the
   masters we have been obeying. If then virtue is, as it were, a second
   Intellectual-Principle, and heightens the soul to Intellectual quality,
   then, once more, our freedom is found to lie not in act but in
   Intellectual-Principle immune from act.

   6. How then did we come to place freedom in the will when we made out
   free action to be that produced -- or as we also indicated, suppressed
   -- at the dictate of will?

   If what we have been saying is true and our former statement is
   consistent with it, the case must stand thus:

   Virtue and Intellectual-Principle are sovereign and must be held the
   sole foundation of our self-disposal and freedom; both then are free;
   Intellectual-Principle is self-confined: Virtue, in its government of
   the soul which it seeks to lift into goodness, would wish to be free;
   in so far as it does so it is free and confers freedom; but inevitably
   experiences and actions are forced upon it by its governance: these it
   has not planned for, yet when they do arise it will watch still for its
   sovereignty calling these also to judgement. Virtue does not follow
   upon occurrences as a saver of the emperilled; at its discretion it
   sacrifices a man; it may decree the jettison of life, means, children,
   country even; it looks to its own high aim and not to the safeguarding
   of anything lower. Thus our freedom of act, our self-disposal, must be
   referred not to the doing, not to the external thing done but to the
   inner activity, to the Intellection, to virtue's own vision.

   So understood, virtue is a mode of Intellectual-Principle, a mode not
   involving any of the emotions or passions controlled by its reasonings,
   since such experiences, amenable to morality and discipline, touch
   closely -- we read -- on body.

   This makes it all the more evident that the unembodied is the free; to
   this our self-disposal is to be referred; herein lies our will which
   remains free and self-disposing in spite of any orders which it may
   necessarily utter to meet the external. All then that issues from will
   and is the effect of will is our free action; and in the highest degree
   all that lies outside of the corporeal is purely within the scope of
   will, all that will adopts and brings, unimpeded, into existence.

   The contemplating Intellect, the first or highest, has self-disposal to
   the point that its operation is utterly independent; it turns wholly
   upon itself; its very action is itself; at rest in its good it is
   without need, complete, and may be said to live to its will; there the
   will is intellection: it is called will because it expresses the
   Intellectual-Principle in the willing-phase and, besides, what we know
   as will imitates this operation taking place within the
   Intellectual-Principle. Will strives towards the good which the act of
   Intellectual-Principle realizes. Thus that principle holds what will
   seeks, that good whose attainment makes will identical with
   Intellection.

   But if self-disposal is founded thus on the will aiming at the good,
   how can it possibly be denied to that principle permanently possessing
   the good, sole object of the aim?

   Any one scrupulous about setting self-disposal so high may find some
   loftier word.

   7. Soul becomes free when it moves, through Intellectual-Principle,
   towards The Good; what it does in that spirit is its free act;
   Intellectual-Principle is free in its own right. That principle of Good
   is the sole object of desire and the source of self-disposal to the
   rest, to soul when it fully attains, to Intellectual-Principle by
   connate possession.

   How then can the sovereign of all that august sequence -- the first in
   place, that to which all else strives to mount, all dependent upon it
   and taking from it their powers even to this power of self-disposal --
   how can This be brought under the freedom belonging to you and me, a
   conception applicable only by violence to Intellectual-Principle
   itself?

   It is rash thinking drawn from another order that would imagine a First
   Principle to be chance -- made what it is, controlled by a manner of
   being imposed from without, void therefore of freedom or self-disposal,
   acting or refraining under compulsion. Such a statement is untrue to
   its subject and introduces much difficulty; it utterly annuls the
   principle of freewill with the very conception of our own voluntary
   action, so that there is no longer any sense in discussion upon these
   terms, empty names for the non-existent. Anyone upholding this opinion
   would be obliged to say not merely that free act exists nowhere but
   that the very word conveys nothing to him. To admit understanding the
   word is to be easily brought to confess that the conception of freedom
   does apply where it is denied. No doubt a concept leaves the reality
   untouched and unappropriated, for nothing can produce itself, bring
   itself into being; but thought insists upon distinguishing between what
   is subject to others and what is independent, bound under no
   allegiance, lord of its own act.

   This state of freedom belongs in the absolute degree to the Eternals in
   right of that eternity and to other beings in so far as without
   hindrance they possess or pursue The Good which, standing above them
   all, must manifestly be the only good they can reasonably seek.

   To say that The Good exists by chance must be false; chance belongs to
   the later, to the multiple; since the First has never come to be, we
   cannot speak of it either as coming by chance into being or as not
   master of its being. Absurd also the objection that it acts in
   accordance with its being if this is to suggest that freedom demands
   act or other expression against the nature. Neither does its nature as
   the unique annul its freedom when this is the result of no compulsion
   but means only that The Good is no other than itself, is self-complete
   and has no higher.

   The objection would imply that where there is most good there is least
   freedom. If this is absurd, still more absurd to deny freedom to The
   Good on the ground that it is good and self-concentred, not needing to
   lean upon anything else but actually being the Term to which all tends,
   itself moving to none.

   Where -- since we must use such words -- the essential act is identical
   with the being -- and this identity must obtain in The Good since it
   holds even in Intellectual-Principle -- there the act is no more
   determined by the Being than the Being by the Act. Thus "acting
   according to its nature" does not apply; the Act, the Life, so to
   speak, cannot be held to issue from the Being; the Being accompanies
   the Act in an eternal association: from the two [Being and Act] it
   forms itself into The Good, self-springing and unspringing.

   8. But it is not, in our view, as an attribute that this freedom is
   present in the First. In the light of free acts, from which we
   eliminate the contraries, we recognise There self-determination,
   self-directed and, failing more suitable terms, we apply to it the
   lesser terms brought over from lesser things and so tell it as best we
   may: no words could ever be adequate or even applicable to that from
   which all else -- the noble, the august -- is derived. For This is
   principle of all, or, more strictly, unrelated to all and, in this
   consideration, cannot be made to possess such laters as even freedom
   and self-disposal, which in fact indicate manifestation upon the extern
   -- unhindered but implying the existence of other beings whose
   opposition proves ineffective.

   We cannot think of the First as moving towards any other; He holds his
   own manner of being before any other was; even Being we withhold and
   therefore all relation to beings.

   Nor may we speak of any "conforming to the nature"; this again is of
   the later; if the term be applicable at all in that realm it applies
   only to the secondaries -- primally to Essential Existence as next to
   this First. And if a "nature" belongs only to things of time, this
   conformity to nature does not apply even to Essential Existence. On the
   other hand, we are not to deny that it is derived from Essential
   Existence for that would be to take away its existence and would imply
   derivation from something else.

   Does this mean that the First is to be described as happening to be?

   No; that would be just as false; nothing "happens" to the First; it
   stands in no such relationship; happening belongs only to the multiple
   where, first, existence is given and then something is added. And how
   could the Source "happen to be"? There has been no coming so that you
   can put it to the question "How does this come to be? What chance
   brought it here, gave it being?" Chance did not yet exist; there was no
   "automatic action": these imply something before themselves and occur
   in the realm of process.

   9. If we cannot but speak of Happening we must not halt at the word but
   look to the intention. And what is that? That the Supreme by possession
   of a certain nature and power is the Principle. Obviously if its nature
   were other it would be that other and if the difference were for the
   worse it would manifest itself as that lesser being. But we must add in
   correction that, as Principle of All, it could not be some chance
   product; it is not enough to say that it could not be inferior; it
   could not even be in some way good, for instance in some less perfect
   degree; the Principle of All must be of higher quality than anything
   that follows it. It is therefore in a sense determined -- determined, I
   mean, by its uniqueness and not in any sense of being under compulsion;
   compulsion did not co-exist with the Supreme but has place only among
   secondaries and even there can exercise no tyranny; this uniqueness is
   not from outside.

   This, then, it is; This and no other; simply what it must be; it has
   not "happened" but is what by a necessity prior to all necessities it
   must be. We cannot think of it as a chance existence; it is not what it
   chanced to be but what it must be -- and yet without a "Must."

   All the rest waits for the appearing of the king to hail him for
   himself, not a being of accident and happening but authentically king,
   authentically Principle, The Good authentically, not a being that acts
   in conformity with goodness -- and so, recognisably, a secondary -- but
   the total unity that he is, no moulding upon goodness but the very Good
   itself.

   Even Being is exempt from happening: of course, anything happening
   happens to Being, but Being itself has not happened nor is the manner
   of its Being a thing of happening, of derivation; it is the very nature
   of Being to be; how then can we think that this happening can attach to
   the Transcendent of Being, That in whose power lay the very engendering
   of Being?

   Certainly this Transcendent never happened to be what it is; it is so,
   just as Being exists in complete identity with its own essential nature
   and that of Intellectual-Principle. Certainly that which has never
   passed outside of its own orbit, unbendingly what it is, its own
   unchangeably, is that which may most strictly be said to possess its
   own being: what then are we to say when we mount and contemplate that
   which stands yet higher; can we conceivably say "Thus, as we see it,
   thus has it happened to be"? Neither thus nor in any mode did it happen
   to be; there is no happening; there is only a "Thus and No Otherwise
   than Thus." And even "Thus" is false; it would imply limit, a defined
   form: to know This is to be able to reject both the "Thus" and the
   "Not-Thus," either of which classes among Beings to which alone Manner
   of Being can attach.

   A "Thus" is something that attaches to everything in the world of
   things: standing before the indefinable you may name any of these
   sequents but you must say This is none of them: at most it is to be
   conceived as the total power towards things, supremely self-concentred,
   being what it wills to be or rather projecting into existence what it
   wills, itself higher than all will, will a thing beneath it. In a word
   it neither willed its own "Thus" -- as something to conform to -- nor
   did any other make it "Thus."

   10. The upholder of Happening must be asked how this false happening
   can be supposed to have come about, taking it that it did, and haw the
   happening, then, is not universally prevalent. If there is to be a
   natural scheme at all, it must be admitted that this happening does not
   and cannot exist: for if we attribute to chance the Principle which is
   to eliminate chance from all the rest, how can there ever be anything
   independent of chance? And this Nature does take away the chanced from
   the rest, bringing in form and limit and shape. In the case of things
   thus conformed to reason the cause cannot be identified with chance but
   must lie in that very reason; chance must be kept for what occurs apart
   from choice and sequence and is purely concurrent. When we come to the
   source of all reason, order and limit, how can we attribute the reality
   there to chance? Chance is no doubt master of many things but is not
   master of Intellectual-Principle, of reason, of order, so as to bring
   them into being. How could chance, recognised as the very opposite of
   reason, be its Author? And if it does not produce
   Intellectual-Principle, then certainly not that which precedes and
   surpasses that Principle. Chance, besides, has no means of producing,
   has no being at all, and, assuredly, none in the Eternal.

   Since there is nothing before Him who is the First, we must call a
   halt; there is nothing to say; we may enquire into the origin of his
   sequents but not of Himself who has no origin.

   But perhaps, never having come to be but being as He is, He is still
   not master of his own essence: not master of his essence but being as
   He is, not self-originating but acting out of his nature as He finds
   it, must He not be of necessity what He is, inhibited from being
   otherwise?

   No: What He is, He is not because He could not be otherwise but because
   so is best. Not everything has power to move towards the better though
   nothing is prevented by any external from moving towards the worse. But
   that the Supreme has not so moved is its own doing: there has been no
   inhibition; it has not moved simply because it is That which does not
   move; in this stability the inability to degenerate is not
   powerlessness; here permanence is very Act, a self-determination. This
   absence of declination comports the fulness of power; it is not the
   yielding of a being held and controlled but the Act of one who is
   necessity, law, to all.

   Does this indicate a Necessity which has brought itself into existence?
   No: there has been no coming into being in any degree; This is that by
   which being is brought to all the rest, its sequents. Above all
   origins, This can owe being neither to an extern nor to itself.

   11. But this Unoriginating, what is it?

   We can but withdraw, silent, hopeless, and search no further. What can
   we look for when we have reached the furthest? Every enquiry aims at a
   first and, that attained, rests.

   Besides, we must remember that all questioning deals with the nature of
   a thing, its quality, its cause or its essential being. In this case
   the being -- in so far as we can use the word -- is knowable only by
   its sequents: the question as to cause asks for a principle beyond, but
   the principle of all has no principle; the question as to quality would
   be looking for an attribute in that which has none: the question as to
   nature shows only that we must ask nothing about it but merely take it
   into the mind if we may, with the knowledge gained that nothing can be
   permissibly connected with it.

   The difficulty this Principle presents to our mind in so far as we can
   approach to conception of it may be exhibited thus:

   We begin by posing space, a place, a Chaos; into this existing
   container, real or fancied, we introduce God and proceed to enquire: we
   ask, for example, whence and how He comes to be there: we investigate
   the presence and quality of this new-comer projected into the midst of
   things here from some height or depth. But the difficulty disappears if
   we eliminate all space before we attempt to conceive God: He must not
   be set in anything either as enthroned in eternal immanence or as
   having made some entry into things: He is to be conceived as existing
   alone, in that existence which the necessity of discussion forces us to
   attribute to Him, with space and all the rest as later than Him --
   space latest of all. Thus we conceive as far as we may, the spaceless;
   we abolish the notion of any environment: we circumscribe Him within no
   limit; we attribute no extension to Him; He has no quality since no
   shape, even shape Intellectual; He holds no relationship but exists in
   and for Himself before anything is.

   How can we think any longer of that "Thus He happened to be"? How make
   this one assertion of Him of whom all other assertion can be no more
   than negation? It is on the contrary nearer the truth to say "Thus He
   has happened not to be": that contains at least the utter denial of his
   happening.

   12. Yet, is not God what He is? Can He, then, be master of being what
   He is or master to stand above Being? The mind utterly reluctant
   returns to its doubt: some further considerations, therefore, must be
   offered:

   In us the individual, viewed as body, is far from reality; by soul
   which especially constitutes the being we participate in reality, are
   in some degree real. This is a compound state, a mingling of Reality
   and Difference, not, therefore reality in the strictest sense, not
   reality pure. Thus far we are not masters of our being; in some sense
   the reality in us is one thing and we another. We are not masters of
   our being; the real in us is the master, since that is the principle
   establishing our characteristic difference; yet we are again in some
   sense that which is sovereign in us and so even on this level might in
   spite of all be described as self-disposing.

   But in That which is wholly what it is -- self-existing reality,
   without distinction between the total thing and its essence -- the
   being is a unit and is sovereign over itself; neither the being nor the
   essence is to be referred to any extern. Besides, the very question as
   to self. disposal falls in the case of what is First in reality; if it
   can be raised at all, we must declare that there can be no subjection
   whatever in That to which reality owes its freedom, That in whose
   nature the conferring of freedom must clearly be vested, preeminently
   to be known as the liberator.

   Still, is not this Principle subject to its essential Being? On the
   contrary, it is the source of freedom to Being.

   Even if there be Act in the Supreme -- an Act with which it is to be
   identified -- this is not enough to set up a duality within it and
   prevent it being entirely master of that self from which the Act
   springs; for the Act is not distinct from that self. If we utterly deny
   Act in it -- holding that Act begins with others moving about it -- we
   are all the less able to allow either self-mastery or subjection in it:
   even self-mastery is absent here, not that anything else is master over
   it but that self-mastery begins with Being while the Supreme is to be
   set in a higher order.

   But what can there be higher than that which is its own master?

   Where we speak of self-mastery there is a certain duality, Act against
   essence; from the exercise of the Act arises the conception of the
   mastering principle -- though one identical with the essence -- hence
   arises the separate idea of mastery, and the being concerned is said to
   possess self-mastery. Where there is no such duality joining to unity
   but solely a unity pure -- either because the Act is the whole being or
   because there is no Act at all -- then we cannot strictly say that the
   being has this mastery of self.

   13. Our enquiry obliges us to use terms not strictly applicable: we
   insist, once more, that not even for the purpose of forming the concept
   of the Supreme may we make it a duality; if now we do, it is merely for
   the sake of conveying conviction, at the cost of verbal accuracy.

   If, then, we are to allow Activities in the Supreme and make them
   depend upon will -- and certainly Act cannot There be will-less and
   these Activities are to be the very essence, then will and essence in
   the Supreme must be identical. This admitted, as He willed to be so He
   is; it is no more true to say that He wills and acts as His nature
   determines than that His essence is as He wills and acts. Thus He is
   wholly master of Himself and holds His very being at His will.

   Consider also that every being in its pursuit of its good seeks to be
   that good rather than what it is it judges itself most truly to be when
   it partakes of its good: in so far as it thus draws on its good its
   being is its choice: much more, then, must the very Principle, The
   Good, be desirable in itself when any fragment of it is very desirable
   to the extern and becomes the chosen essence promoting that extern's
   will and identical with the will that gave the existence?

   As long as a thing is apart from its good it seeks outside itself; when
   it holds its good it itself as it is: and this is no matter of chance;
   the essence now is not outside of the will; by the good it is
   determined, by the good it is in self-possession.

   If then this Principle is the means of determination to everything
   else, we see at once that self-possession must belong primally to it,
   so that, through it, others in their turn may be self-belonging: what
   we must call its essence comports its will to possess such a manner of
   being; we can form no idea of it without including in it the will
   towards itself as it is. It must be a consistent self willing its being
   and being what it wills; its will and itself must be one thing, all the
   more one from the absence of distinction between a given nature and one
   which would be preferred. What could The Good have wished to be other
   than what it is? Suppose it had the choice of being what it preferred,
   power to alter the nature, it could not prefer to be something else; it
   could have no fault to find with anything in its nature, as if that
   nature were imposed by force; The Good is what from always it wished
   and wishes to be. For the really existent Good is a willing towards
   itself, towards a good not gained by any wiles or even attracted to it
   by force of its nature; The Good is what it chose to be and, in fact,
   there was never anything outside it to which it could be drawn.

   It may be added that nothing else contains in its essence the principle
   of its own satisfaction; there will be inner discord: but this
   hypostasis of the Good must necessarily have self-option, the will
   towards the self; if it had not, it could not bring satisfaction to the
   beings whose contentment demands participation in it or imagination of
   it.

   Once more, we must be patient with language; we are forced to apply to
   the Supreme terms which strictly are ruled out; everywhere we must read
   "So to speak." The Good, then, exists; it holds its existence through
   choice and will, conditions of its very being: yet it cannot be a
   manifold; therefore the will and the essential being must be taken as
   one identity; the act of the will must be self-determined and the being
   self-caused; thus reason shows the Supreme to be its own Author. For if
   the act of will springs from God Himself and is as it were His
   operation and the same will is identical with His essence, He must be
   self-established. He is not, therefore, "what He has happened to be"
   but what He has willed to be.

   14. Another approach: Everything to which existence may be attributed
   is either one with its essence or distinct from it. Thus any given man
   is distinct from essential man though belonging to the order Man: a
   soul and a soul's essence are the same -- that is, in case of soul pure
   and unmingled -- Man as type is the same as man's essence; where the
   thing, man, and the essence are different, the particular man may be
   considered as accidental; but man, the essence, cannot be so; the type,
   Man, has Real Being. Now if the essence of man is real, not chanced or
   accidental, how can we think That to be accidental which transcends the
   order man, author of the type, source of all being, a principle more
   nearly simplex than man's being or being of any kind? As we approach
   the simplex, accident recedes; what is utterly simplex accident never
   touches at all.

   Further we must remember what has been already said, that where there
   is true being, where things have been brought to reality by that
   Principle -- and this is true of whatsoever has determined condition
   within the order of sense -- all that reality is brought about in
   virtue of something emanating from the divine. By things of determined
   condition I mean such as contain, inbound with their essence, the
   reason of their being as they are, so that, later, an observer can
   state the use for each of the constituent parts -- why the eye, why
   feet of such and such a kind to such and such a being -- and can
   recognise that the reason for the production of each organ is inherent
   in that particular being and that the parts exist for each other. Why
   feet of a certain length? Because another member is as it is: because
   the face is as it is, therefore the feet are what they are: in a word
   the mutual determinant is mutual adaptation and the reason of each of
   the several forms is that such is the plan of man.

   Thus the essence and its reason are one and the same. The constituent
   parts arise from the one source not because that source has so
   conceived each separately but because it has produced simultaneously
   the plan of the thing and its existence. This therefore is author at
   once of the existence of things and of their reasons, both produced at
   the one stroke. It is in correspondence with the things of process but
   far more nearly archetypal and authentic and in a closer relation with
   the Better, their source, than they can be.

   Of things carrying their causes within, none arises at hazard or
   without purpose; this "So it happened to be" is applicable to none. All
   that they have comes from The Good; the Supreme itself, then, as author
   of reason, of causation, and of causing essence -- all certainly lying
   far outside of chance -- must be the Principle and as it were the
   examplar of things, thus independent of hazard: it is, the First, the
   Authentic, immune from chance, from blind effect and happening: God is
   cause of Himself; for Himself and of Himself He is what He is, the
   first self, transcendently The Self.

   15. Lovable, very love, the Supreme is also self-love in that He is
   lovely no otherwise than from Himself and in Himself. Self-presence can
   hold only in the identity of associated with associating; since, in the
   Supreme, associated and associating are one, seeker and sought one the
   sought serving as Hypostasis and substrate of the seeker -- once more
   God's being and his seeking are identical: once more, then, the Supreme
   is the self-producing, sovereign of Himself, not happening to be as
   some extern willed but existing as He wills it.

   And when we say that neither does He absorb anything nor anything
   absorb Him, thus again we are setting Him outside of all happening --
   not only because we declare Him unique and untouched by all but in
   another way also. Suppose we found such a nature in ourselves; we are
   untouched by all that has gathered round us subjecting us to happening
   and chance; all that accruement was of the servile and lay exposed to
   chance: by this new state alone we acquire self-disposal and free act,
   the freedom of that light which belongs to the order of the good and is
   good in actuality, greater than anything Intellectual-Principle has to
   give, an actuality whose advantage over Intellection is no adventitious
   superiority. When we attain to this state and become This alone, what
   can we say but that we are more than free, more than self-disposing?
   And who then could link us to chance, hazard, happening, when thus we
   are become veritable Life, entered into That which contains no alloy
   but is purely itself?

   Isolate anything else and the being is inadequate; the Supreme in
   isolation is still what it was. The First cannot be in the soulless or
   in an unreasoning life; such a life is too feeble in being; it is
   reason dissipated, it is indetermination; only in the measure of
   approach towards reason is there liberation from happening; the
   rational is above chance. Ascending we come upon the Supreme, not as
   reason but as reason's better: thus God is far removed from all
   happening: the root of reason is self-springing.

   The Supreme is the Term of all; it is like the principle and ground of
   some vast tree of rational life; itself unchanging, it gives reasoned
   being to the growth into which it enters.

   16. We maintain, and it is evident truth, that the Supreme is
   everywhere and yet nowhere; keeping this constantly in mind let us see
   how it bears on our present enquiry.

   If God is nowhere, then not anywhere has He "happened to be"; as also
   everywhere, He is everywhere in entirety: at once, He is that
   everywhere and everywise: He is not in the everywhere but is the
   everywhere as well as the giver to the rest of things of their being in
   that everywhere. Holding the supreme place -- or rather no holder but
   Himself the Supreme -- all lies subject to Him; they have not brought
   Him to be but happen, all, to Him -- or rather they stand there before
   Him looking upon Him, not He upon them. He is borne, so to speak, to
   the inmost of Himself in love of that pure radiance which He is, He
   Himself being that which He. loves. That is to say, as self-dwelling
   Act and Intellectual-Principle, the most to be loved, He has given
   Himself existence. Intellectual-Principle is the issue of Act: God
   therefore is issue of Act, but, since no other has generated Him, He is
   what He made Himself: He is not, therefore, "as He happened to be" but
   as He acted Himself into being.

   Again; if He preeminently is because He holds firmly, so to speak,
   towards Himself, looking towards Himself, so that what we must call his
   being is this self-looking, He must again, since the word is
   inevitable, make Himself: thus, not "as He happens to be" is He but as
   He Himself wills to be. Nor is this will a hazard, a something
   happening; the will adopting the Best is not a thing of chance.

   That his being is constituted by this self-originating self-tendence --
   at once Act and repose -- becomes clear if we imagine the contrary;
   inclining towards something outside of Himself, He would destroy the
   identity of his being. This self-directed Act is, therefore, his
   peculiar being, one with Himself. If, then, his act never came to be
   but is eternal -- a waking without an awakener, an eternal wakening and
   a supra-Intellection -- He is as He waked Himself to be. This awakening
   is before being, before Intellectual-Principle, before rational life,
   though He is these; He is thus an Act before Intellectual-Principle and
   consciousness and life; these come from Him and no other; his being,
   then, is a self-presence, issuing from Himself. Thus not "as He
   happened to be" is He but as He willed to be.

   17. Or consider it another way: We hold the universe, with its content
   entire, to be as all would be if the design of the maker had so willed
   it, elaborating it with purpose and prevision by reasonings amounting
   to a Providence. All is always so and all is always so reproduced:
   therefore the reason-principles of things must lie always within the
   producing powers in a still more perfect form; these beings of the
   divine realm must therefore be previous to Providence and to
   preference; all that exists in the order of being must lie for ever
   There in their Intellectual mode. If this regime is to be called
   Providence it must be in the sense that before our universe there
   exists, not expressed in the outer, the Intellectual-Principle of all
   the All, its source and archetype.

   Now if there is thus an Intellectual-Principle before all things, their
   founding principle, this cannot be a thing lying subject to chance --
   multiple, no doubt, but a concordance, ordered so to speak into
   oneness. Such a multiple -- the co-ordination of all particulars and
   consisting of all the Reason-Principles of the universe gathered into
   the closest union -- this cannot be a thing of chance, a thing
   "happening so to be." It must be of a very different nature, of the
   very contrary nature, separated from the other by all the difference
   between reason and reasonless chance. And if the Source is precedent
   even to this, it must be continuous with this reasoned secondary so
   that the two be correspondent; the secondary must participate in the
   prior, be an expression of its will, be a power of it: that higher
   therefore [as above the ordering of reason] is without part or interval
   [implied by reasoned arrangement], is a one -- all Reason-Principle,
   one number, a One greater than its product, more powerful, having no
   higher or better. Thus the Supreme can derive neither its being nor the
   quality of its being. God Himself, therefore, is what He is,
   self-related, self-tending; otherwise He becomes outward-tending,
   other-seeking -- who cannot but be wholly self-poised.

   18. Seeking Him, seek nothing of Him outside; within is to be sought
   what follows upon Him; Himself do not attempt. He is, Himself, that
   outer, He the encompassment and measure of all things; or rather He is
   within, at the innermost depth; the outer, circling round Him, so to
   speak, and wholly dependent upon Him, is Reason-Principle and
   Intellectual-Principle-or becomes Intellectual-Principle by contact
   with Him and in the degree of that contact and dependence; for from Him
   it takes the being which makes it Intellectual-Principle.

   A circle related in its path to a centre must be admitted to owe its
   scope to that centre: it has something of the nature of that centre in
   that the radial lines converging on that one central point assimilate
   their impinging ends to that point of convergence and of departure, the
   dominant of radii and terminals: the terminals are of one nature with
   the centre, separate reproductions of it, since the centre is, in a
   certain sense, the total of terminals and radii impinging at every
   point upon it; these lines reveal the centre; they are the development
   of that undeveloped.

   In the same way we are to take Intellectual-Principle and Being. This
   combined power springs from the Supreme, an outflow and as it were
   development from That and remaining dependent upon that Intellective
   nature, showing forth That which, in the purity of its oneness, is not
   Intellectual-Principle since it is no duality. No more than in the
   circle are the lines or circumference to be identified with that Centre
   which is the source of both: radii and circle are images given forth by
   indwelling power and, as products of a certain vigour in it, not cut
   off from it.

   Thus the Intellective power circles in its multiple unity around the
   Supreme which stands to it as archetype to image; the image in its
   movement round about its prior has produced the multiplicity by which
   it is constituted Intellectual-Principle: that prior has no movement;
   it generates Intellectual-Principle by its sheer wealth.

   Such a power, author of Intellectual-Principle, author of being -- how
   does it lend itself to chance, to hazard, to any "So it happened"?

   What is present in Intellectual-Principle is present, though in a far
   transcendent mode, in the One: so in a light diffused afar from one
   light shining within itself, the diffused is vestige, the source is the
   true light; but Intellectual-Principle, the diffused and image light,
   is not different in kind from its prior; and it is not a thing of
   chance but at every point is reason and cause.

   The Supreme is cause of the cause: it is cause preeminently, cause as
   containing cause in the deepest and truest mode; for in it lie the
   Intellective causes which are to be unfolded from it, author as it is
   not of the chance -- made but of what the divine willed: and this
   willing was not apart from reason, was not in the realm of hazard and
   of what happened to present itself.

   Thus Plato, seeking the best account of the necessary and appropriate,
   says they are far removed from hazard and that what exists is what must
   exist: if thus the existence is as it must be it does not exist without
   reason: if its manner of being is the fitting, it is the utterly
   self-disposing in comparison with its sequents and, before that, in
   regard to itself: thus it is not "as it happened to be" but as it
   willed to be: all this, on the assumption that God wills what should be
   and that it is impossible to separate right from realization and that
   this Necessary is not to God an outside thing but is, itself, His first
   Activity manifesting outwardly in the exactly representative form. Thus
   we must speak of God since we cannot tell Him as we would.

   19. Stirred to the Supreme by what has been told, a man must strive to
   possess it directly; then he too will see, though still unable to tell
   it as he would wish.

   One seeing That as it really is will lay aside all reasoning upon it
   and simply state it as the self-existent; such that if it had essence
   that essence would be subject to it and, so to speak, derived from it;
   none that has seen would dare to talk of its "happening to be," or
   indeed be able to utter word. With all his courage he would stand
   astounded, unable at any venture to speak of This, with the vision
   everywhere before the eyes of the soul so that, look where one may,
   there it is seen unless one deliberately look away, ignoring God,
   thinking no more upon Him. So we are to understand the Beyond-Essence
   darkly indicated by the ancients: is not merely that He generated
   Essence but that He is subject neither to Essence nor to Himself; His
   essence is not His Principle; He is Principle to Essence and not for
   Himself did He make it; producing it He left it outside of Himself: He
   had no need of being who brought it to be. Thus His making of being is
   no "action in accordance with His being."

   20. The difficulty will be raised that God would seem to have existed
   before thus coming into existence; if He makes Himself, then in regard
   to the self which He makes He is not yet in being and as maker He
   exists before this Himself thus made.

   The answer is that we utterly must not speak of Him as made but sheerly
   as maker; the making must be taken as absolved from all else; no new
   existence is established; the Act here is not directed to an
   achievement but is God Himself unalloyed: here is no duality but pure
   unity. Let no one suspect us of asserting that the first Activity is
   without Essence; on the contrary the Activity is the very reality. To
   suppose a reality without activity would be to make the Principle of
   all principles deficient; the supremely complete becomes incomplete. To
   make the Activity something superadded to the essence is to shatter the
   unity. If then Activity is a more perfect thing than essence and the
   First is all perfect, then the Activity is the First.

   By having acted, He is what He is and there is no question of "existing
   before bringing Himself into existence"; when He acted He was not in
   some state that could be described as "before existing." He was already
   existent entirely.

   Now assuredly an Activity not subjected essence is utterly free; God's
   selfhood, then, is of his own Act. If his being has to be ensured by
   something else, He is no longer the self-existent First: if it be true
   to say that He is his own container, then He inducts Himself; for all
   that He contains is his own production from the beginning since from
   the beginning He caused the being of all that by nature He contains.

   If there had been a moment from which He began to be, it would be
   possible assert his self-making in the literal sense; but, since what
   He is He is from before all time, his self-making is to be understood
   as simultaneous with Himself; the being is one and the same with the
   making and eternal "coming into existence."

   This is the source also of his self-disposal -- strictly applicable if
   there were a duality, but conveying, in the case of a unity, a
   disposing without a disposed, an abstract disposing. But how a disposer
   with nothing to dispose? In that there is here a disposer looking to a
   prior when there is none: since there is no prior, This is the First --
   but a First not in order but in sovereignty, in power purely
   self-controlled. Purely; then nothing can be There that is under any
   external disposition; all in God is self-willing. What then is there of
   his content that is not Himself, what that is not in Act, what not his
   work? Imagine in Him anything not of his Act and at once His existence
   ceases to be pure; He is not self-disposing, not all-powerful: in that
   at least of whose doing He is not master He would be impotent.

   21. Could He then have made Himself otherwise than as He did?

   If He could we must deny Him the power to produce goodness for He
   certainly cannot produce evil. Power, There, is no producer of the
   inapt; it is that steadfast constant which is most decidedly power by
   inability to depart from unity: ability to produce the inapt inability
   to hold by the fitting; that self-making must be definite once for all
   since it is the right; besides, who could upset what is made by the
   will of God and is itself that will?

   But whence does He draw that will seeing that essence, source of will,
   is inactive in Him?

   The will was included in the essence; they were identical: or was there
   something, this will for instance, not existing in Him? All was will,
   nothing unwilled in Him. There is then nothing before that will: God
   and will were primally identical.

   God, therefore, is what He willed, is such as He willed; and all that
   ensued upon that willing was what that definite willing engendered: but
   it engendered nothing new; all existed from the first.

   As for his "self-containing," this rightly understood can mean only
   that all the rest is maintained in virtue of Him by means of a certain
   participation; all traces back to the Supreme; God Himself,
   self-existing always, needs no containing, no participating; all in Him
   belongs to Him or rather He needs nothing from them in order to being
   Himself.

   When therefore you seek to state or to conceive Him, put all else
   aside; abstracting all, keep solely to Him; see that you add nothing;
   be sure that your theory of God does not lessen Him. Even you are able
   to take contact with Something in which there is no more than That
   Thing itself to affirm and know, Something which lies away above all
   and is -- it alone -- veritably free, subject not even to its own law,
   solely and essentially That One Thing, while all else is thing and
   something added.
     __________________________________________________________________

  NINTH TRACTATE.

  ON THE GOOD, OR THE ONE.

   1. It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings.

   This is equally true of things whose existence is primal and of all
   that are in any degree to be numbered among beings. What could exist at
   all except as one thing? Deprived of unity, a thing ceases to be what
   it is called: no army unless as a unity: a chorus, a flock, must be one
   thing. Even house and ship demand unity, one house, one ship; unity
   gone, neither remains thus even continuous magnitudes could not exist
   without an inherent unity; break them apart and their very being is
   altered in the measure of the breach of unity.

   Take plant and animal; the material form stands a unity; fallen from
   that into a litter of fragments, the things have lost their being; what
   was is no longer there; it is replaced by quite other things -- as many
   others, precisely, as possess unity.

   Health, similarly, is the condition of a body acting as a co-ordinate
   unity. Beauty appears when limbs and features are controlled by this
   principle, unity. Moral excellence is of a soul acting as a concordant
   total, brought to unity.

   Come thus to soul -- which brings all to unity, making, moulding,
   shaping, ranging to order -- there is a temptation to say "Soul is the
   bestower of unity; soul therefore is the unity." But soul bestows other
   characteristics upon material things and yet remains distinct from its
   gift: shape, Ideal-Form and the rest are all distinct from the giving
   soul; so, clearly, with this gift of unity; soul to make things unities
   looks out upon the unity just as it makes man by looking upon Man,
   realizing in the man the unity belonging to Man.

   Anything that can be described as a unity is so in the precise degree
   in which it holds a characteristic being; the less or more the degree
   of the being, the less or more the unity. Soul, while distinct from
   unity's very self, is a thing of the greater unity in proportion as it
   is of the greater, the authentic, being. Absolute unity it is not: it
   is soul and one soul, the unity in some sense a concomitant; there are
   two things, soul and soul's unity as there is body with body's unity.
   The looser aggregates, such as a choir, are furthest from unity, the
   more compact are the nearer; soul is nearer yet but still a
   participant.

   Is soul to be identified with unity on the ground that unless it were
   one thing it could not be soul? No; unity is equally necessary to every
   other thing, yet unity stands distinct from them; body and unity are
   not identical; body, too; is still a participant.

   Besides, the soul, even the collective soul for all its absence of
   part, is a manifold: it has diverse powers -- reasoning, desiring,
   perceiving -- all held together by this chain of unity. Itself a unity,
   soul confers unity, but also accepts it.

   2. It may be suggested that, while in the unities of the partial order
   the essence and the unity are distinct, yet in collective existence, in
   Real Being, they are identical, so that when we have grasped Being we
   hold unity; Real Being would coincide with Unity. Thus, taking the
   Intellectual-Principle as Essential Being, that principle and the Unity
   Absolute would be at once Primal Being and Pure Unity, purveying,
   accordingly, to the rest of things something of Being and something, in
   proportion, of the unity which is itself.

   There is nothing with which the unity would be more plausibly
   identified than with Being; either it is Being as a given man is man or
   it will correspond to the Number which rules in the realm of the
   particular; it will be a number applying to a certain unique thing as
   the number two applies to others.

   Now if Number is a thing among things, then clearly so this unity must
   be; we would have to discover what thing of things it is. If Number is
   not a thing but an operation of the mind moving out to reckon, then the
   unity will not be a thing.

   We found that anything losing unity loses its being; we are therefore
   obliged to enquire whether the unity in particulars is identical with
   the being, and unity absolute identical with collective being.

   Now the being of the particular is a manifold; unity cannot be a
   manifold; there must therefore be a distinction between Being and
   Unity. Thus a man is at once a reasoning living being and a total of
   parts; his variety is held together by his unity; man therefore and
   unity are different -- man a thing of parts against unity partless.
   Much more must Collective Being, as container of all existence, be a
   manifold and therefore distinct from the unity in which it is but
   participant.

   Again, Collective Being contains life and intelligence -- it is no dead
   thing -- and so, once more, is a manifold.

   If Being is identical with Intellectual-Principle, even at that it is a
   manifold; all the more so when count is taken of the Ideal Forms in it;
   for the Idea, particular or collective, is, after all, a numerable
   agglomeration whose unity is that of a kosmos.

   Above all, unity is The First: but Intellectual-Principle, Ideas and
   Being, cannot be so; for any member of the realm of Forms is an
   aggregation, a compound, and therefore -- since components must precede
   their compound -- is a later.

   Other considerations also go to show that the Intellectual-Principle
   cannot be the First. Intellect must be above the Intellectual Act: at
   least in its higher phase, that not concerned with the outer universe,
   it must be intent upon its Prior; its introversion is a conversion upon
   the Principle.

   Considered as at once Thinker and Object of its Thought, it is dual,
   not simplex, not The Unity: considered as looking beyond itself, it
   must look to a better, to a prior: looking simultaneously upon itself
   and upon its Transcendent, it is, once more, not a First.

   There is no other way of stating Intellectual-Principle than as that
   which, holding itself in the presence of The Good and First and looking
   towards That, is self-present also, self-knowing and Knowing itself as
   All-Being: thus manifold, it is far from being The Unity.

   In sum: The Unity cannot be the total of beings, for so its oneness is
   annulled; it cannot be the Intellectual-Principle, for so it would be
   that total which the Intellectual-Principle is; nor is it Being, for
   Being is the manifold of things.

   3. What then must The Unity be, what nature is left for it?

   No wonder that to state it is not easy; even Being and Form are not
   easy, though we have a way, an approach through the Ideas.

   The soul or mind reaching towards the formless finds itself incompetent
   to grasp where nothing bounds it or to take impression where the
   impinging reality is diffuse; in sheer dread of holding to nothingness,
   it slips away. The state is painful; often it seeks relief by
   retreating from all this vagueness to the region of sense, there to
   rest as on solid ground, just as the sight distressed by the minute
   rests with pleasure on the bold.

   Soul must see in its own way; this is by coalescence, unification; but
   in seeking thus to know the Unity it is prevented by that very
   unification from recognising that it has found; it cannot distinguish
   itself from the object of this intuition. Nonetheless, this is our one
   resource if our philosophy is to give us knowledge of The Unity.

   We are in search of unity; we are to come to know the principle of all,
   the Good and First; therefore we may not stand away from the realm of
   Firsts and lie prostrate among the lasts: we must strike for those
   Firsts, rising from things of sense which are the lasts. Cleared of all
   evil in our intention towards The Good, we must ascend to the Principle
   within ourselves; from many, we must become one; only so do we attain
   to knowledge of that which is Principle and Unity. We shape ourselves
   into Intellectual-Principle; we make over our soul in trust to
   Intellectual-Principle and set it firmly in That; thus what That sees
   the soul will waken to see; it is through the Intellectual-Principle
   that we have this vision of The Unity; it must be our care to bring
   over nothing whatever from sense, to allow nothing even of soul to
   enter into Intellectual-Principle: with Intellect pure, and with the
   summit of Intellect, we are to see the All-Pure.

   If quester has the impression of extension or shape or mass attaching
   to That Nature he has not been led by Intellectual-Principle which is
   not of the order to see such things; the activity has been of sense and
   of the judgement following upon sense: only Intellectual-Principle can
   inform us of the things of its scope; its competence is upon its
   priors, its content and its issue: but even its content is outside of
   sense; and still purer, still less touched by multiplicity, are its
   priors, or rather its Prior.

   The Unity, then, is not Intellectual-Principle but something higher
   still: Intellectual-Principle is still a being but that First is no
   being but precedent to all Being; it cannot be a being, for a being has
   what we may call the shape of its reality but The Unity is without
   shape, even shape Intellectual.

   Generative of all, The Unity is none of all; neither thing nor quantity
   nor quality nor intellect nor soul; not in motion, not at rest, not in
   place, not in time: it is the self-defined, unique in form or, better,
   formless, existing before Form was, or Movement or Rest, all of which
   are attachments of Being and make Being the manifold it is.

   But how, if not in movement, can it be otherwise than at rest?

   The answer is that movement and rest are states pertaining to Being,
   which necessarily has one or the other or both. Besides, anything at
   rest must be so in virtue of Rest as something distinct: Unity at rest
   becomes the ground of an attribute and at once ceases to be a simplex.

   Note, similarly, that, when we speak of this First as Cause, we are
   affirming something happening not to it but to us, the fact that we
   take from this Self-Enclosed: strictly we should put neither a This nor
   a That to it; we hover, as it were, about it, seeking the statement of
   an experience of our own, sometimes nearing this Reality, sometimes
   baffled by the enigma in which it dwells.

   4. The main part of the difficulty is that awareness of this Principle
   comes neither by knowing nor by the Intellection that discovers the
   Intellectual Beings but by a presence overpassing all knowledge. In
   knowing, soul or mind abandons its unity; it cannot remain a simplex:
   knowing is taking account of things; that accounting is multiple; the
   mind, thus plunging into number and multiplicity, departs from unity.

   Our way then takes us beyond knowing; there may be no wandering from
   unity; knowing and knowable must all be left aside; every object of
   thought, even the highest, we must pass by, for all that is good is
   later than This and derives from This as from the sun all the light of
   the day.

   "Not to be told; not to be written": in our writing and telling we are
   but urging towards it: out of discussion we call to vision: to those
   desiring to see, we point the path; our teaching is of the road and the
   travelling; the seeing must be the very act of one that has made this
   choice.

   There are those that have not attained to see. The soul has not come to
   know the splendour There; it has not felt and clutched to itself that
   love-passion of vision known to lover come to rest where he loves. Or
   struck perhaps by that authentic light, all the soul lit by the
   nearness gained, we have gone weighted from beneath; the vision is
   frustrate; we should go without burden and we go carrying that which
   can but keep us back; we are not yet made over into unity.

   From none is that Principle absent and yet from all: present, it
   remains absent save to those fit to receive, disciplined into some
   accordance, able to touch it closely by their likeness and by that
   kindred power within themselves through which, remaining as it was when
   it came to them from the Supreme, they are enabled to see in so far as
   God may at all be seen.

   Failure to attain may be due to such impediment or to lack of the
   guiding thought that establishes trust; impediment we must charge
   against ourselves and strive by entire renunciation to become
   emancipate; where there is distrust for lack of convincing reason,
   further considerations may be applied:

   5. Those to whom existence comes about by chance and automatic action
   and is held together by material forces have drifted far from God and
   from the concept of unity; we are not here addressing them but only
   such as accept another nature than body and have some conception of
   soul.

   Soul must be sounded to the depths, understood as an emanation from
   Intellectual-Principle and as holding its value by a Reason-Principle
   thence infused. Next this Intellect must be apprehended, an Intellect
   other than the reasoning faculty known as the rational principle; with
   reasoning we are already in the region of separation and movement: our
   sciences are Reason-Principles lodged in soul or mind, having
   manifestly acquired their character by the presence in the soul of
   Intellectual-Principle, source of all knowing.

   Thus we come to see Intellectual-Principle almost as an object of
   sense: the Intellectual Kosmos is perceptible as standing above soul,
   father to soul: we know Intellectual-Principle as the motionless, not
   subject to change, containing, we must think, all things; a multiple
   but at once indivisible and comporting difference. It is not
   discriminate as are the Reason-Principles, which can in fact be known
   one by one: yet its content is not a confusion; every item stands forth
   distinctly, just as in a science the entire content holds as an
   indivisible and yet each item is a self-standing verity.

   Now a plurality thus concentrated like the Intellectual Kosmos is close
   upon The First -- and reason certifies its existence as surely as that
   of soul -- yet, though of higher sovereignty than soul, it is not The
   First since it is not a unity, not simplex as unity, principle over all
   multiplicity, must be.

   Before it there is That which must transcend the noblest of the things
   of Being: there must be a prior to this Principle which aiming towards
   unity is yet not unity but a thing in unity's likeness. From this
   highest it is not sundered; it too is self-present: so close to the
   unity, it cannot be articulated: and yet it is a principle which in
   some measure has dared secession.

   That awesome Prior, The Unity, is not a being, for so its unity would
   be vested in something else: strictly no name is apt to it, but since
   name it we must there is a certain rough fitness in designating it as
   unity with the understanding that it is not the unity of some other
   thing.

   Thus it eludes our knowledge, so that the nearer approach to it is
   through its offspring, Being: we know it as cause of existence to
   Intellectual-Principle, as fount of all that is best, as the efficacy
   which, self-perduring and undiminishing, generates all beings and is
   not to be counted among these its derivatives, to all of which it must
   be prior.

   This we can but name The Unity, indicating it to each other by a
   designation that points to the concept of its partlessness while we are
   in reality striving to bring our own minds to unity. We are not to
   think of such unity and partlessness as belong to point or monad; the
   veritable unity is the source of all such quantity which could not
   exist unless first there existed Being and Being's Prior: we are not,
   then, to think in the order of point and monad but to use these -- in
   their rejection of magnitude and partition -- as symbols for the higher
   concept.

   6. In what sense, then, do we assert this Unity, and how is it to be
   adjusted to our mental processes?

   Its oneness must not be entitled to that of monad and point: for these
   the mind abstracts extension and numerical quantity and rests upon the
   very minutest possible, ending no doubt in the partless but still in
   something that began as a partible and is always lodged in something
   other than itself. The Unity was never in any other and never belonged
   to the partible: nor is its impartibility that of extreme minuteness;
   on the contrary it is great beyond anything, great not in extension but
   in power, sizeless by its very greatness as even its immediate sequents
   are impartible not in mass but in might. We must therefore take the
   Unity as infinite not in measureless extension or numerable quantity
   but in fathomless depths of power.

   Think of The One as Mind or as God, you think too meanly; use all the
   resources of understanding to conceive this Unity and, again, it is
   more authentically one than God, even though you reach for God's unity
   beyond the unity the most perfect you can conceive. For This is utterly
   a self-existent, with no concomitant whatever. This self-sufficing is
   the essence of its unity. Something there must be supremely adequate,
   autonomous, all-transcending, most utterly without need.

   Any manifold, anything beneath The Unity, is dependent; combined from
   various constituents, its essential nature goes in need of unity; but
   unity cannot need itself; it stands unity accomplished. Again, a
   manifold depends upon all its factors; and furthermore each of those
   factors in turn -- as necessarily inbound with the rest and not
   self-standing -- sets up a similar need both to its associates and to
   the total so constituted.

   The sovranly self-sufficing principle will be Unity-Absolute, for only
   in this Unity is there a nature above all need, whether within itself
   or in regard to the rest of things. Unity seeks nothing towards its
   being or its well-being or its safehold upon existence; cause to all,
   how can it acquire its character outside of itself or know any good
   outside? The good of its being can be no borrowing: This is The Good.
   Nor has it station; it needs no standing ground as if inadequate to its
   own sustaining; what calls for such underpropping is the soulless, some
   material mass that must be based or fall. This is base to all, cause of
   universal existence and of ordered station. All that demands place is
   in need; a First cannot go in need of its sequents: all need is effort
   towards a first principle; the First, principle to all, must be utterly
   without need. If the Unity be seeking, it must inevitably be seeking to
   be something other than itself; it is seeking its own destroyer.
   Whatever may be said to be in need of a good is needing a preserver;
   nothing can be a good to The Unity, therefore.

   Neither can it have will to anything; it is a Beyond-Good, not even to
   itself a good but to such beings only as may be of quality to have part
   with it. Nor has it Intellection; that would comport diversity: nor
   Movement; it is prior to Movement as to Intellection.

   To what could its Intellection be directed? To itself? But that would
   imply a previous ignorance; it would be dependent upon that
   Intellection in order to knowledge of itself; but it is the
   self-sufficing. Yet this absence of self-knowing does not comport
   ignorance; ignorance is of something outside -- a knower ignorant of a
   knowable -- but in the Solitary there is neither knowing nor anything
   unknown. Unity, self-present, it has no need of self-intellection:
   indeed this "self-presence" were better left out, the more surely to
   preserve the unity; we must eliminate all knowing and all association,
   all intellection whether internal or external. It is not to be though
   of as having but as being Intellection; Intellection does not itself
   perform the intellective act but is the cause of the act in something
   else, and cause is not to be identified with caused: most assuredly the
   cause of all is not a thing within that all.

   This Principle is not, therefore, to be identified with the good of
   which it is the source; it is good in the unique mode of being The Good
   above all that is good.

   7. If the mind reels before something thus alien to all we know, we
   must take our stand on the things of this realm and strive thence to
   see. But, in the looking, beware of throwing outward; this Principle
   does not lie away somewhere leaving the rest void; to those of power to
   reach, it is present; to the inapt, absent. In our daily affairs we
   cannot hold an object in mind if we have given ourselves elsewhere,
   occupied upon some other matter; that very thing must be before us to
   be truly the object of observation. So here also; preoccupied by the
   impress of something else, we are withheld under that pressure from
   becoming aware of The Unity; a mind gripped and fastened by some
   definite thing cannot take the print of the very contrary. As Matter,
   it is agreed, must be void of quality in order to accept the types of
   the universe, so and much more must the soul be kept formless if there
   is to be no infixed impediment to prevent it being brimmed and lit by
   the Primal Principle.

   In sum, we must withdraw from all the extern, pointed wholly inwards;
   no leaning to the outer; the total of things ignored, first in their
   relation to us and later in the very idea; the self put out of mind in
   the contemplation of the Supreme; all the commerce so closely There
   that, if report were possible, one might become to others reporter of
   that communion.

   Such converse, we may suppose, was that of Minos, thence known as the
   Familiar of Zeus; and in that memory he established the laws which
   report it, enlarged to that task by his vision There. Some, on the
   other hand, there will be to disdain such citizen service, choosing to
   remain in the higher: these will be those that have seen much.

   God -- we read -- is outside of none, present unperceived to all; we
   break away from Him, or rather from ourselves; what we turn from we
   cannot reach; astray ourselves, we cannot go in search of another; a
   child distraught will not recognise its father; to find ourselves is to
   know our source.

   8. Every soul that knows its history is aware, also, that its movement,
   unthwarted, is not that of an outgoing line; its natural course may be
   likened to that in which a circle turns not upon some external but on
   its own centre, the point to which it owes its rise. The soul's
   movement will be about its source; to this it will hold, poised intent
   towards that unity to which all souls should move and the divine souls
   always move, divine in virtue of that movement; for to be a god is to
   be integral with the Supreme; what stands away is man still multiple,
   or beast.

   Is then this "centre" of our souls the Principle for which we are
   seeking?

   We must look yet further: we must admit a Principle in which all these
   centres coincide: it will be a centre by analogy with the centre of the
   circle we know. The soul is not a circle in the sense of the geometric
   figure but in that it at once contains the Primal Nature [as centre]
   and is contained by it [as circumference], that it owes its origin to
   such a centre and still more that the soul, uncontaminated, is a
   self-contained entity.

   In our present state -- part of our being weighed down by the body, as
   one might have the feet under water with all the rest untouched -- we
   bear -- ourselves aloft by that -- intact part and, in that, hold
   through our own centre to the centre of all the centres, just as the
   centres of the great circles of a sphere coincide with that of the
   sphere to which all belong. Thus we are secure.

   If these circles were material and not spiritual, the link with the
   centres would be local; they would lie round it where it lay at some
   distant point: since the souls are of the Intellectual, and the Supreme
   still loftier, we understand that contact is otherwise procured, that
   is by those powers which connect Intellectual agent with Intellectual
   Object; this all the more, since the Intellect grasps the Intellectual
   object by the way of similarity, identity, in the sure link of kindred.
   Material mass cannot blend into other material mass: unbodied beings
   are not under this bodily limitation; their separation is solely that
   of otherness, of differentiation; in the absence of otherness, it is
   similars mutually present.

   Thus the Supreme as containing no otherness is ever present with us; we
   with it when we put otherness away. It is not that the Supreme reaches
   out to us seeking our communion: we reach towards the Supreme; it is we
   that become present. We are always before it: but we do not always
   look: thus a choir, singing set in due order about the conductor, may
   turn away from that centre to which all should attend: let it but face
   aright and it sings with beauty, present effectively. We are ever
   before the Supreme -- cut off is utter dissolution; we can no longer be
   -- but we do not always attend: when we look, our Term is attained;
   this is rest; this is the end of singing ill; effectively before Him,
   we lift a choral song full of God.

   9. In this choiring, the soul looks upon the wellspring of Life,
   wellspring also of Intellect, beginning of Being, fount of Good, root
   of Soul. It is not that these are poured out from the Supreme lessening
   it as if it were a thing of mass. At that the emanants would be
   perishable; but they are eternal; they spring from an eternal
   principle, which produces them not by its fragmentation but in virtue
   of its intact identity: therefore they too hold firm; so long as the
   sun shines, so long there will be light.

   We have not been cut away; we are not separate, what though the
   body-nature has closed about us to press us to itself; we breathe and
   hold our ground because the Supreme does not give and pass but gives on
   for ever, so long as it remains what it is.

   Our being is the fuller for our turning Thither; this is our
   prosperity; to hold aloof is loneliness and lessening. Here is the
   soul's peace, outside of evil, refuge taken in the place clean of
   wrong; here it has its Act, its true knowing; here it is immune. Here
   is living, the true; that of to-day, all living apart from Him, is but
   a shadow, a mimicry. Life in the Supreme is the native activity of
   Intellect; in virtue of that converse it brings forth gods, brings
   forth beauty, brings forth righteousness, brings forth all moral good;
   for of all these the soul is pregnant when it has been filled with God.
   This state is its first and its final, because from God it comes, its
   good lies There, and, once turned to God again, it is what it was. Life
   here, with the things of earth, is a sinking, a defeat, a failing of
   the wing.

   That our good is There is shown by the very love inborn with the soul;
   hence the constant linking of the Love-God with the Psyches in story
   and picture; the soul, other than God but sprung of Him, must needs
   love. So long as it is There, it holds the heavenly love; here its love
   is the baser; There the soul is Aphrodite of the heavens; here, turned
   harlot, Aphrodite of the public ways: yet the soul is always an
   Aphrodite. This is the intention of the myth which tells of Aphrodite's
   birth and Eros born with her.

   The soul in its nature loves God and longs to be at one with Him in the
   noble love of a daughter for a noble father; but coming to human birth
   and lured by the courtships of this sphere, she takes up with another
   love, a mortal, leaves her father and falls.

   But one day coming to hate her shame, she puts away the evil of earth,
   once more seeks the father, and finds her peace.

   Those to whom all this experience is strange may understand by way of
   our earthly longings and the joy we have in winning to what we most
   desire -- remembering always that here what we love is perishable,
   hurtful, that our loving is of mimicries and turns awry because all was
   a mistake, our good was not here, this was not what we sought; There
   only is our veritable love and There we may hold it and be with it,
   possess it in its verity no longer submerged in alien flesh. Any that
   have seen know what I have in mind: the soul takes another life as it
   approaches God; thus restored it feels that the dispenser of true life
   is There to see, that now we have nothing to look for but, far
   otherwise, that we must put aside all else and rest in This alone, This
   become, This alone, all the earthly environment done away, in haste to
   be free, impatient of any bond holding us to the baser, so that with
   our being entire we may cling about This, no part in us remaining but
   through it we have touch with God.

   Thus we have all the vision that may be of Him and of ourselves; but it
   is of a self-wrought to splendour, brimmed with the Intellectual light,
   become that very light, pure, buoyant, unburdened, raised to Godhood
   or, better, knowing its Godhood, all aflame then -- but crushed out
   once more if it should take up the discarded burden.

   10. But how comes the soul not to keep that ground?

   Because it has not yet escaped wholly: but there will be the time of
   vision unbroken, the self hindered no longer by any hindrance of body.
   Not that those hindrances beset that in us which has veritably seen; it
   is the other phase of the soul that suffers and that only when we
   withdraw from vision and take to knowing by proof, by evidence, by the
   reasoning processes of the mental habit. Such logic is not to be
   confounded with that act of ours in the vision; it is not our reason
   that has seen; it is something greater than reason, reason's Prior, as
   far above reason as the very object of that thought must be.

   In our self-seeing There, the self is seen as belonging to that order,
   or rather we are merged into that self in us which has the quality of
   that order. It is a knowing of the self restored to its purity. No
   doubt we should not speak of seeing; but we cannot help talking in
   dualities, seen and seer, instead of, boldly, the achievement of unity.
   In this seeing, we neither hold an object nor trace distinction; there
   is no two. The man is changed, no longer himself nor self-belonging; he
   is merged with the Supreme, sunken into it, one with it: centre
   coincides with centre, for on this higher plane things that touch at
   all are one; only in separation is there duality; by our holding away,
   the Supreme is set outside. This is why the vision baffles telling; we
   cannot detach the Supreme to state it; if we have seen something thus
   detached we have failed of the Supreme which is to be known only as one
   with ourselves.

   11. This is the purport of that rule of our Mysteries: Nothing Divulged
   to the Uninitiate: the Supreme is not to be made a common story, the
   holy things may not be uncovered to the stranger, to any that has not
   himself attained to see. There were not two; beholder was one with
   beheld; it was not a vision compassed but a unity apprehended. The man
   formed by this mingling with the Supreme must -- if he only remember --
   carry its image impressed upon him: he is become the Unity, nothing
   within him or without inducing any diversity; no movement now, no
   passion, no outlooking desire, once this ascent is achieved; reasoning
   is in abeyance and all Intellection and even, to dare the word, the
   very self; caught away, filled with God, he has in perfect stillness
   attained isolation; all the being calmed, he turns neither to this side
   nor to that, not even inwards to himself; utterly resting he has become
   very rest. He belongs no longer to the order of the beautiful; he has
   risen beyond beauty; he has overpassed even the choir of the virtues;
   he is like one who, having penetrated the inner sanctuary, leaves the
   temple images behind him -- though these become once more first objects
   of regard when he leaves the holies; for There his converse was not
   with image, not with trace, but with the very Truth in the view of
   which all the rest is but of secondary concern.

   There, indeed, it was scarcely vision, unless of a mode unknown; it was
   a going forth from the self, a simplifying, a renunciation, a reach
   towards contact and at the same time a repose, a meditation towards
   adjustment. This is the only seeing of what lies within the holies: to
   look otherwise is to fail.

   Things here are signs; they show therefore to the wiser teachers how
   the supreme God is known; the instructed priest reading the sign may
   enter the holy place and make real the vision of the inaccessible.

   Even those that have never found entry must admit the existence of that
   invisible; they will know their source and Principle since by principle
   they see principle and are linked with it, by like they have contact
   with like and so they grasp all of the divine that lies within the
   scope of mind. Until the seeing comes they are still craving something,
   that which only the vision can give; this Term, attained only by those
   that have overpassed all, is the All-Transcending.

   It is not in the soul's nature to touch utter nothingness; the lowest
   descent is into evil and, so far, into non-being: but to utter nothing,
   never. When the soul begins again to mount, it comes not to something
   alien but to its very self; thus detached, it is not in nothingness but
   in itself; self-gathered it is no longer in the order of being; it is
   in the Supreme.

   There is thus a converse in virtue of which the essential man outgrows
   Being, becomes identical with the Transcendent of Being. The self thus
   lifted, we are in the likeness of the Supreme: if from that heightened
   self we pass still higher -- image to archetype -- we have won the Term
   of all our journeying. Fallen back again, we awaken the virtue within
   until we know ourselves all order once more; once more we are lightened
   of the burden and move by virtue towards Intellectual-Principle and
   through the Wisdom in That to the Supreme.

   This is the life of gods and of the godlike and blessed among men,
   liberation from the alien that besets us here, a life taking no
   pleasure in the things of earth, the passing of solitary to solitary.

    THE END.
     __________________________________________________________________

No comments:

Post a Comment