4. We ourselves are kings when we think in conformity with
intelligence. This, however, can take place in two ways. Either
we have received from intelligence the impressions and rules which
are, as it were, engraved within us, so that we are, so to speak,
filled with intelligence; or we can have the perception and intuition
of it, because it is present with us. When we see intelligence, we
recognize that by contemplation of it we ourselves are grasping other
intelligible entities. This may occur in two ways; either because,
by the help of this very power, we grasp the power which cognizes
intelligible entities; or because we ourselves become intelligence.
The man who thus knows himself is double. Either he knows discursive
reason, which is characteristic of the soul, or, rising to a superior
condition, he cognizes himself and is united with intelligence. Then,
by intelligence, that man thinks himself; no more indeed as being man,
but as having become superior to man, as having been transported into
the intelligible Reason, and drawing thither with himself the best part
of the soul, the one which alone is capable of taking flight towards
thought, and of receiving the fund of knowledge resulting from his
intuition. But does discursive reason not know that it is discursive
reason, and that its domain is the comprehension of external objects?
Does it not, while doing so, know that it judges? Does it not know that
it is judging by means of the rules derived from intelligence, which
itself contains? Does it not know that above it is a principle which
possesses intelligible entities, instead of seeking (merely) to know
them? But what would this faculty be if it did not know what it is,
and what its functions are? It knows, therefore, that it depends on
intelligence, that it is inferior to intelligence, and that it is the
image of intelligence, that it contains the rules of intelligence as
it were engraved within itself, such as intelligence engraves them, or
rather, has engraved them on it.