But how does he rise up thither? How does he have the power to do
so? How does he learn to love? Here it is. The beauty seen in bodies
is incidental; it consists in the shapes of which the bodies are
the matter.[110] Consequently the substance changes, and it is seen
changing from beauty to ugliness. The body has only a borrowed beauty.
Who imparted that beauty to the body? On the one hand, the presence of
beauty; on the other, the actualization of the soul which fashioned the
body, and which gave it the shape it possesses. But is the soul, by
herself, absolute beauty? No, since some souls are wise and beautiful,
while some others are foolish and ugly. It is therefore only by wisdom
that the soul is beautiful. But from what is her wisdom derived?
Necessarily from intelligence; not from the intelligence that is
intelligent at some time, though not at others, but from the genuine
Intelligence, which is beautiful on that very account.[111] Shall we
stop at Intelligence, as a first principle? Or shall we on the contrary
still rise above it? Surely so, for Intelligence presents itself to us
before the first Principle only because it is, so to speak, located in
the antechamber of the Good.[112] It bears all things within itself,
and manifests them, so that it displays the image of the Good in
manifoldness, while the Good itself remains in an absolute simple unity.