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.