11. The ancient sages, who wished to materialize the divinities by
making statues of them, seem to me to have well judged the nature of
the universe. They understood that the being of the universal Soul was
easy to attract anywhere, that her presence can easily be summoned
in everything suited to receive her action, and thus to participate
somewhat in her power. Now anything is suited to undergo the action of
the soul when it lends itself like a mirror to the reflection of any
kind of an image. In the universe nature most artistically forms all
beings in the image of the reasons it contains. In each of (nature's)
works the ("seminal) reason" that is united to matter, being the image
of the reason superior to the matter (of the idea), reattaches itself
to divinity (to Intelligence), according to which it was begotten,
and which the universal Soul contemplated while creating.[121] It was
therefore equally impossible that there should be here below anything
which did not participate in the divinity, and which the latter brought
down here below; for (the divinity) is Intelligence, the sun that
shines there on high. Let us consider (the universal Soul) as the
model of reason. Below the Intelligence is the Soul, which depends
on it, which subsists by and with it. The Soul holds to this sun (of
Intelligence); the Soul is the intermediary by which the beings here
below are reattached to intelligible beings; she is the interpreter of
things which descend from the intelligible world into the sense-world,
and of the things of the sense-world which return into the intelligible
world. Indeed, intelligible things are not separated from each other;
they are distinguished only by their difference and their constitution.
Each of them remains within itself, without any relation to locality;
they are simultaneously united and separate. The beings that we call
divinities deserve to be considered such because they never swerve
from intelligible entities, because they depend on the universal Soul
considered in her principle, at the very moment of the Soul's issuing
from Intelligence. Thus these beings are divinities by virtue of the
very principle to which they owe their existence, and because they
devote themselves to the contemplation of Intelligence, from which the
universal Soul herself does not distract her gaze.