Restored to intelligence, the soul sees her own beauty increase;
indeed, her own beauty consists of the intelligence with its ideas;
only when united to intelligence is the soul really isolated from all
the remainder. That is the reason that it is right to say that "the
soul's welfare and beauty lie in assimilating herself to the divinity,"
because it is the principle of beauty and of the essences; or rather,
being is beauty, while the other nature (non-being, matter), is
ugliness. This is the First Evil, evil in itself, just as that one (the
First Principle) is the good and the beautiful; for good and beauty
are identical. Consequently, beauty or good, and evil or ugliness, are
to be studied by the same methods. The first rank is to be assigned to
beauty, which is identical with the good, and from which is derived
the intelligence which is beautiful by itself. The soul is beautiful
by intelligence, then, the other things, like actions, and studies,
are beautiful by the soul which gives them a form. It is still the
soul which beautifies the bodies to which is ascribed this perfection;
being a divine essence, and participating in beauty, when she seizes an
object, or subjects it to her dominion, she gives to it the beauty that
the nature of this object enables it to receive.