32. (3, 5-7) There is a difference between intelligence and the
intelligible, between sensation and that which can be sensed. The
intelligible is united to intelligence as that which can be sensed is
connected with sensation. But sensation cannot perceive itself....
As the intelligible is united to Intelligence, it is grasped by
intelligence and not by sensation. But intelligence is intelligible for
intelligence. Since then intelligence is intelligible for intelligence,
intelligence is its own object. If intelligence be intelligible, but
not "sensible," it is an intelligible object. Being intelligible
by intelligence, but not by sensation, it will be intelligent.
Intelligence, therefore, is simultaneously thinker and thought, all
that thinks and all that is thought. Its operation, besides, is not
that of an object that rubs and is rubbed: "It is not a subject in some
one part of itself, and in some other, object of thought; it is simple,
it is entirely intelligible for itself as a whole."[334] The whole of
intelligence excludes any idea of unintelligence. It does not contain
one part that thinks, while another would not think; for then, in so
far as it would not think, "it would be unintelligent." It does not
abandon one object to think of another; for it would cease to think the
object it abandoned. If, therefore, intelligence do not successively
pass from one object to another, it thinks simultaneously; it does not
think first one (thought) and then another; it thinks everything as in
the present, and as always....
If intelligence think everything as at present, if it know no past nor
future, its thought is a simple actualization, which excludes every
interval of time. It, therefore, contains everything together, in
respect to time. Intelligence, therefore, thinks, all things according
to unity, and in unity, without anything falling in in time or in
space. If so, intelligence is not discursive, and is not (like the
soul) in motion; it is an actualization, which is according to unity,
and in unity, which shuns all chance development and every discursive
operation.[335] If, in intelligence, manifoldness be reduced to unity,
and if the intellectual actualization be indivisible, and fall not
within time, we shall have to attribute to such a "being" eternal
existence in unity. Now that happens to be "aeonial" or everlasting
existence.[336] Therefore, eternity constitutes the very "being" (or
nature) of intelligence. The other kind of intelligence, that does
not think according to unity, and in unity, which falls into change,
and into movement, which abandons one object to think another, which
divides, and gives itself up to a discursive action, has time as
"being" (or nature).
The distinction of past and future suits its action. When passing from
one object to another, the soul changes thoughts; not indeed that
the former perish, or that the latter suddenly issue from some other
source; but the former, while seeming to have disappeared, remain in
the soul; and the latter, while seeming to come from somewhere else, do
not really do so, but are born from within the soul, which moves only
from one object to another, and which successively directs her gaze
from one to another part of what she possesses. She resembles a spring
which, instead of flowing outside, flows back into itself in a circle.
It is this (circular) movement of the soul that constitutes time, just
as the permanence of intelligence in itself constitutes (aeonial)
eternity. Intelligence is not separated from eternity, any more than
the soul is from time. Intelligence and eternity form but a single
hypostatic form of existence. That which moves simulates eternity by
the indefinite perpetuity of its movement, and that which remains
immovable, simulates time by seeming to multiply its continual present,
in the measure that time passes. That is why some have believed that
time manifested in rest as well as in movement, and that eternity was
no more than the infinity of time. To each of these two (different
things) the attributes of the other were mistakenly attributed. The
reason of this is that anything that ever persists in an identical
movement gives a good illustration of eternity by the continuousness of
its movement; while that which persists in an identical actualization
represents time by the permanence of its actualization. Besides, in
sense-objects, duration differs according to each of them. There is a
difference between the duration of the course of the sun, and that of
the moon, as well as that of Venus, and so on. There is a difference
between the solar year, and the year of each of these stars. Different,
further, is the year that embraces all the other years, and which
conforms to the movement of the soul, according to which the stars
regulate their movements. As the movement of the soul differs from the
movement of the stars, so also does its time differ from that of the
stars; for the divisions of this latter kind of time correspond to
the spaces travelled by each star, and by its successive passages in
different places.