15. He is simultaneously the lovable and love; He is love of himself;
for He is beautiful only by and in Himself. He coexists with Himself
only on condition that the thing, which exists in Himself, is identical
with Him. Now as in Him the thing that coexists is identical with Him,
and as in Him also that which desires, and that which is desirable play
the part of hypostasis and subject, here once more appears the identity
of desire and "being." If this be so, it is evidently again He who is
the author of Himself, and the master of Himself; consequently, He was
made not such as some other being desired it, but He is such as He
Himself desires.
MEN ESCAPE CHANCE BY INFERIOR ISOLATION; THEREFORE THE SUPREME MUST BE
FREE.
When we assert that (the Divinity) Himself receives nothing, and is
received by no other being, we thereby in another way prove that He
is what He is, not by chance. This is the case because He isolates
Himself, and preserves Himself uninfected from all things. Besides,
we sometimes see that our nature possesses something similar, when it
finds itself disengaged from all that is attached to us, and subjects
us to the sway of fortune and fatality--for all the things that we call
ours are dependent, and undergo the law of fortune, happening to us
fortuitously. Only in this manner is one master of himself, possessing
free will, by virtue of an actualization of the light which has the
form of the Good, of an actualization of the Good, which is superior to
intelligence; of an actualization which is not adventitious, and which
is above all thought. When we shall have risen thither, when we shall
have become that alone, leaving all the rest, shall we not say that we
are then above even liberty and free will? Who then could subject us
to chance, to fortune, to contingency, since we shall have become the
genuine life, or rather, since we shall be in Him who derives nothing
from any other being, who is solely himself? When other beings are
isolated, they do not suffice themselves; but He is what He is, even
when isolated.