Thus intellectual Life, which is the perfect actualization, embraces
all the things that our mind now conceives, and all intellectual
operations. In its potentiality it contains all things as essences,
in the same manner as Intelligence does. Now Intelligence possesses
them by thought, a thought which is not discursive (but intuitive).
The intellectual life therefore possesses all the things of which
there are "reasons" (that is, ideas); itself is a single Reason,
great, perfect, which contains all reasons,[327] which examines them
in an orderly fashion, beginning with the first, or rather, which has
ever examined them, so that one could never really tell that it was
examining them.[328] For all things that we grasp by ratiocination,
in whatever part soever of the universe they may be located, are
found as intuitively possessed by Intelligence. It would seem as if
it was Essence itself which, (being identical with Intelligence), had
made Intelligence reason thus (by producing its conceptions),[329]
as appears to happen in the ("seminal) reasons" which produce the
animals.[330] In the (ideas, that is in the "seminal) reasons" which
are anterior to ratiocination, all things are found to possess a
constitution such that the most penetrating intelligence would have
considered best, by reasoning.[331] We should therefore expect (great
and wonderful things) of these Ideas, superior and anterior to Nature
and ("seminal) reasons." There Intelligence fuses with "Being;"[329]
neither in essence nor intelligence is there anything adventitious.
There everything is smoothly perfect, since everything there is
conformable to intelligence. All Essence is what Intelligence demands;
it is consequently veritable primary Essence; for if it proceeded from
some other (source), this also would be Intelligence.