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we know images holding in the absence of their archetype and that a warmed object may retain its heat when the fire is withdrawn.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.