We conclude that this Being is limitless and that, in all the outflow from it, there is no lessening either in its emanation, since this also is the entire universe, nor in itself, the starting point, since it is no assemblage of parts [to be diminished by any outgo].
9.Clearly a Being of this nature is not the primal existent;there must exist that which transcends it, that Being [the Absolute], to which all our discussion has been leading.
In the first place, Plurality is later than Unity.The Intellectual-Principle is a number [= the expression of a plurality]; and number derives from unity: the source of a number such as this must be the authentically One.Further, it is the sum of an Intellectual-Being with the object of its Intellection, so that it is a duality; and, given this duality, we must find what exists before it.
What is this?
The Intellectual-Principle taken separately, perhaps?
No: an Intellect is always inseparable from an intelligible object; eliminate the intelligible, and the Intellectual-Principle disappears with it.If, then, what we are seeking cannot be the Intellectual-Principle but must be something that rejects the duality there present, then the Prior demanded by that duality must be something on the further side of the Intellectual-Principle.
But might it not be the Intelligible object itself?
No: for the Intelligible makes an equally inseparable duality with the Intellectual-Principle.
If, then, neither the Intellectual-Principle nor the Intelligible Object can be the First Existent, what is?
Our answer can only be:
The source of both.
What will This be; under what character can we picture It?
It must be either Intellective or without Intellection: if Intellective it is the Intellectual-Principle; if not, it will be without even knowledge of itself- so that, either way, what is there so august about it?
If we define it as The Good and the wholly simplex, we will, no doubt, be telling the truth, but we will not be giving any certain and lucid account of it as long as we have in mind no entity in which to lodge the conception by which we define it.
Yet: our knowledge of everything else comes by way of our intelligence; our power is that of knowing the intelligible by means of the intelligence: but this Entity transcends all of the intellectual nature; by what direct intuition, then, can it be brought within our grasp?
To this question the answer is that we can know it only in the degree of human faculty: we indicate it by virtue of what in ourselves is like it.
For in us, also, there is something of that Being; nay, nothing, ripe for that participation, can be void of it.
Wherever you be, you have only to range over against this omnipresent Being that in you which is capable of drawing from It, and you have your share in it: imagine a voice sounding over a vast waste of land, and not only over the emptiness alone but over human beings; wherever you be in that great space you have but to listen and you take the voice entire- entire though yet with a difference.
And what do we take when we thus point the Intelligence?
The Intellectual-Principle in us must mount to its origins:
essentially a thing facing two ways, it must deliver itself over to those powers within it which tend upward; if it seeks the vision of that Being, it must become something more than Intellect.
For the Intellectual-Principle is the earliest form of Life: it is the Activity presiding over the outflowing of the universal Order- the outflow, that is, of the first moment, not that of the continuous process.
In its character as Life, as emanation, as containing all things in their precise forms and not merely in the agglomerate mass- for this would be to contain them imperfectly and inarticulately- it must of necessity derive from some other Being, from one that does not emanate but is the Principle of Emanation, of Life, of Intellect and of the Universe.
For the Universe is not a Principle and Source: it springs from a source, and that source cannot be the All or anything belonging to the All, since it is to generate the All, and must be not a plurality but the Source of plurality, since universally a begetting power is less complex than the begotten.Thus the Being that has engendered the Intellectual-Principle must be more simplex than the Intellectual-Principle.
We may be told that this engendering Principle is the One-and-All.
But, at that, it must be either each separate entity from among all or it will be all things in the one mass.
Now if it were the massed total of all, it must be of later origin than any of the things of which it is the sum; if it precedes the total, it differs from the things that make up the total and they from it: if it and the total of things constitute a co-existence, it is not a Source.But what we are probing for must be a Source; it must exist before all, that all may be fashioned as sequel to it.
As for the notion that it may be each separate entity of the All, this would make a self-Identity into a what you like, where you like, indifferently, and would, besides, abolish all distinction in things themselves.
Once more we see that this can be no thing among things but must be prior to all things.
10.And what will such a Principle essentially be?
The potentiality of the Universe: the potentiality whose non-existence would mean the non-existence of all the Universe and even of the Intellectual-Principle which is the primal Life and all Life.
This Principle on the thither side of Life is the cause of Life-for that Manifestation of Life which is the Universe of things is not the First Activity; it is itself poured forth, so to speak, like water from a spring.
Imagine a spring that has no source outside itself; it gives itself to all the rivers, yet is never exhausted by what they take, but remains always integrally as it was; the tides that proceed from it are at one within it before they run their several ways, yet all, in some sense, know beforehand down what channels they will pour their streams.