11. How can the intelligible, which has no extension, penetrate into
the whole body of the universe, which has no such extension? How does
it remain single and identical, and how does it not split up? This
question has been raised several times, and we sought to answer it, so
as to leave no uncertainty. We have often demonstrated that the things
are thus; nevertheless, it will be well to give some further convincing
proofs, although we have already given the strongest demonstration,
and the most evident one, by teaching the quality of the nature of the
intelligible, explaining that it is not a vast mass, some enormous
stone which, located in space, might be said to occupy an extension
determined by its own magnitude, and would be incapable of going beyond
its limits; for its mass and its power would be measured by its own
nature, which is that of a stone. (The intelligible Essence, on the
contrary,) being the primary nature, has no extension that is limited
or measured, because it itself is the measure of the sense-nature; and
because it is the universal power without any determinate magnitude.
Nor is it within time, because the time is continually divided into
intervals, while eternity dwells in its own identity, dominating and
surpassing time by its perpetual power, though this seemed to have an
unlimited course. Time may be compared to a line which, while extending
indefinitely, ever depends from a point, and turns around it; so,
that, into whatever place it advances, it always reveals the immovable
point around which it moves in a circle. If, by nature, time be in the
same relation (as is this line with its centre), and if the identical
Essence be infinite by its power as well as by its eternity, by virtue
of its infinite power it will have to produce a nature which would in
some way be parallel to this infinite power, which rises with it, and
depends from it, and which finally, by the movable course of time,
tries to equal this power which remains movable in itself.[6] But then
even this power of the intelligible Essence remains superior to the
universe, because the former determines the extension of the latter.