Thus he will first rise to intelligence, and he will there contemplate
beauty, and declare that all this beauty resides in the Ideas. Indeed,
in them everything is beautiful, because they are the daughters and the
very essence of Intelligence.
Above intelligence, he will meet Him whom we call the nature of the
Good, and who causes beauty to radiate around Him; so that, to repeat,
the first thing that is met is beauty. If a distinction is to be
established among the intelligibles, we might say that intelligible
beauty is the locus of ideas, and that the Good, which is located above
the Beautiful, is its source and principle. If, however, we desire to
locate the Good and the Beautiful within one single principle, we might
regard this one principle first as Good, and only afterwards, as Beauty.