Let us also remember that each of the beings which exist genuinely,
as we have said, and which have received their form of hypostatic
existence from the Good, likewise owe it to Him that they are
individual, as are the similarly situated sense-beings. By such
individual beings is here meant having in one's own being the cause
of his hypostatic existence. Consequently, He who then contemplates
things can give an account of each of their details, to give the
cause of the individuality of eyes or feet, to show that the cause of
the generation of each part is found in its relations with the other
parts, and that they have all been made for each other. Why are the
feet of a particular length? Because some other organ is "such"; for
instance, the face being such, the feet themselves must be such. In
one word, the universal harmony[190] is the cause on account of which
all things were made for each other.[191] Why is the individual such
a thing? Because of the Man-essence. Therefore the essence and the
cause coincide. They issued from the same source, from the Principle
which, without having need of reasoning, produced together the essence
and the cause. Thus the source of the essence and the cause produces
them both simultaneously. Such then are begotten things, such is their
principle, but in a much superior and truer manner; for in respect of
excellence, it possesses an immense superiority over them. Now since
it is not fortuitously, neither by chance, nor contingently, that
the things which bear their cause in themselves, are what they are;
since, on the other hand, (the Divinity) possesses all the entities of
which He is the principle, evidently, being the Father of reason, of
cause, and of causal being--all of them entities entirely free from
contingence--he is the Principle and type of all things that are not
contingent, the Principle which is really and in the highest degree
independent of chance, of fortune, and of contingency; He is the cause
of Himself, He is He by virtue of Himself; for He is Self in a primary
and transcendent manner.