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.