Essences ("beings") therefore cannot exist without an actualization
of Intelligence. By this actualization, after having produced some
("being"), Intelligence always produces some other one, somehow
carrying out the career which it is natural for veritable Intelligence
to carry out within itself; this career is that of the beings, of
which each corresponds to one of its evolutions, (or, it roams around
among beings, so that through its roaming around these beings unite
and form.) Since Intelligence is everywhere identical, its evolutions
imply permanence, and they make it move around the "field of truth"[97]
without ever issuing therefrom. It occupies this whole field, because
Intelligence has made itself the locality where its evolutions
operate, a locality which is identical with what it contains. This
field is varied enough to offer a career to be fulfilled; if it were
not universally and eternally varied, there would be a stopping-place
where variety would cease; and, were Intelligence to stop, it would
not think; and if it had never stopped, it would have existed without
thought (or, it would not exist). This however, is not the case;
therefore thought exists, and its universal movement produces the
fulness of universal "Being." Universal "Being," however, is the
thought that embraces universal Life, and which, after each thing, ever
conceives some other; because, since that which within it is identical
is all so different. It continually divides and ever finds something
different from the others. In its march, Intelligence ever progresses
from life to life, from animated (beings) to animated (beings); just
as some traveller, advancing on the earth, finds all that he travels
through to be earth, whatever variations thereof there may have been.
In the intelligible world, the life whose field one traverses is always
self-identical, but it is also always different. The result is that
(this sphere of operations) does not seem the same to us, because in
its evolution, which is identical, life experiences (or, traverses)
things which are not the same. That however does not change this life,
for it passes through different things in a uniform and identical
manner. If this uniformity and identity of Intelligence were not
applied to different things, Intelligence would remain idle; it would
no longer exist in actualization, and no more be actualization. Now
these different things constitute Intelligence itself. Intelligence is
therefore universal, because this universality forms its very nature.
Being thus universal, Intelligence is all things; there is nothing in
it which does not contribute to its universality; and everything is
different, so as to be able still to contribute to totality, by its
very difference. If there were no difference, if everything in it were
identical, the being of Intelligence would be diminished, inasmuch as
its nature would no more co-operate towards its harmonic consummation.
INTELLIGENCE CONTAINS THE INFINITE AS SIMULTANEOUSNESS OF ONE AND MANY
AND AS FRIENDSHIP.
14. By intellectual examples we can understand the nature of
Intelligence, and see that it could not be a unity which does not admit
any kind of difference. As example, consider the ("seminal) reason" of
a plant, and that of an animal. If it be only a unity, without any kind
of variety, it is not even a "reason," and what is born will be no more
than matter. This "reason" must therefore contain all the organs; and,
while embracing all matter, it must not leave any part of it to remain
identical with any other. For instance, the face does not form a single
mass; it contains the nose and the eyes. Nor is even the nose something
simple; it contains different parts whose variety make of it an organ;
if it were reduced to a state of absolute simplicity, it would be no
more than a mass. Thus Intelligence contains the infinite, because
it is simultaneously one and manifold; not indeed like a house, but
as is a ("seminal) reason" which is manifold interiorly. It contains
within, therefore, a sort of figure (or scheme) or even a picture, on
which are interiorly drawn or inscribed its powers and thoughts; their
division does not take place exteriorly, for it is entirely interior.
Thus the universal living Organism embraces other living beings,
within which may be discovered still smaller living beings, and still
smaller powers, and so on till we arrive at the "atomic form."[98]
All these forms are distinguished from each other by their division,
without ever having been confounded together, though they all occur in
the constitution of a single unity. Thus exists in the intelligible
world that union (by Empedocles) called "friendship"; but such union
is very different from that which exists in the sense-world.[163] In
fact, the latter is only the image of the first, because it is formed
of completely disparate elements. Veritable union however consists
in forming but a single (thing) without admitting of any separation
between (elements). Here below, however, objects are separated from
each other.