3. But why could Intelligence not have deliberated before producing
the sense-man? The (man we know by our senses) was (created) by
similitude to the (intelligible Man), nothing can be added to him,
nothing subtracted. It is a mere supposition to say that Intelligence
deliberates and reasons. The theory that things were created, implies
preliminary deliberation and reasoning; but (the latter becomes
impossible) in the case of eternal generation, for that which
originates eternally,[77] cannot be the object of a deliberation.
Intelligence could not deliberate without having forgotten the course
it had followed before; it cannot improve later on without implying
that its beginnings were not perfectly beautiful; had they been this,
they would have remained so. If things be beautiful, it is that they
represent their cause well; for even here below an object is beautiful
only if it possess all its legitimate possessions; that is, if it
possess its proper form. It is the form that contains everything;
the form contains the matter, in the sense that it fashions matter,
and leaves nothing formless therein. But it would contain something
formless if a man lacked some part, as, for instance, an organ such as
the eye.