8. We must posit these three genera (essence, movement, and stability)
because intelligence thinks each of them separately. By thinking
them simultaneously, Intelligence posits them; and, as soon as
Intelligence thinks them, they are (in existence). The things whose
existence ("essence") implies matter do not exist in Intelligence;
for otherwise they would be immaterial. On the contrary, immaterial
things come into existence by merely being thought. So then contemplate
pure Intelligence, instead of seeking it with your bodily eyes, fix
on it your interior gaze. Then will you see the hearth of "Being,"
where shines an unsleeping light; you will see therein how essences
subsist as simultaneously divided and united; you will see in it an
abiding life, the thought which applies not to the future, but to the
present; which possesses it already, and possesses it for ever; which
thinks what is intimate to it, and not what is foreign. Intelligence
thinks: and you have actualization and movement. Intelligence thinks
what is in itself: and you have "being" and essence; for, by merely
existing, Intelligence thinks: Intelligence thinks itself as existing,
and the object to which Intelligence applies its thought exists also.
The actualization of Intelligence on itself is not "being"; but the
object to which it refers, the Principle from which it derives, is
essence. Essence, indeed, is the object of intuition, but not intuition
itself; the latter exists (has "essence") only because it starts from,
and returns thereto. Now as essence is an actualization, and not a
potentiality, it unites both terms (existence and intuition, object and
subject), and, without separating them, it makes of intuition essence,
and of essence intuition. Essence is the unshakable foundation of all
things, and support of their existence; it derives its possessions from
no foreign source, holding them from itself, and within itself. It is
simultaneously the goal of thought, because it is stability that never
needed a beginning, and the principle from which thought was born,
because it is unborn stability; for movement can neither originate
from, nor tend towards movement. The idea also belongs to the genus of
stability, because it is the goal (or limit) of intelligence; but the
intellectual actualization by which it is thought constitutes movement.
Thus all these things form but one thing; and movement, stability,
and the things which exist in all essences constitute genera (or
classifications). Moreover, every essence posterior to these genera is,
in its turn, also definite essence, definite stability, and definite
movement.