Intelligence, therefore, essentially constitutes all beings; and when
Intelligence thinks them, they are not outside of Intelligence, and
neither precede nor follow it. Intelligence is the first legislator,
or rather, it is the very law of existence. Parmenides[126] therefore
was right in saying, "Thought is identical with existence." The
knowledge of immaterial things is therefore identical with those things
themselves. That is why I recognize myself as a being, and why I have
reminiscences of intelligible entities. Indeed, none of those beings is
outside of Intelligence, nor is contained in any location; all of them
subsist in themselves as immutable and indestructible. That is why they
really are beings. If they were born, or perished, they would possess
existence only in an incidental manner, they would no longer be beings;
it would be the existence they possessed which would be essence. It
is only by participation that sense-things are what they are said to
be; the nature that constitutes their substance derives its shape from
elsewhere, as the metal receives its shape from the sculptor, and wood
from the carpenter; while the image of art penetrates into the matter,
the art itself remains in its identity, and within itself possesses
the genuine existence of the statue or of the bed. That is how the
bodies' general necessity of participating in images shows that they
are different from the beings; for they change, while the entities are
immutable, possess within themselves their own foundation, and have
no need of existing in any location, since they have no extension,
and since they subsist in an intellectual and absolute existence.
Again,[127] the existence of the bodies needs to be guarded[128] by
some other principle, while intelligence, which furnishes the existence
for objects in themselves perishable, has need of nothing to make
itself subsist.