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 HASNO 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.