Does reason, considered as nature, also derive from contemplation?
Yes, but on condition that it has contemplated itself somewhat;
for it is produced by a contemplation and a principle which was
contemplated. How does it contemplate itself? It does not possess
this mode of contemplation which proceeds from (discursive) reason;
that is to say, which consists in discursively considering what one
has in himself. Being a living "reason" and a productive power, how
could it fail discursively to consider what it contains? Because one
considers discursively only what he does not yet possess. Now as nature
possesses, she produces by the mere fact that she possesses. To be what
she is and to produce what she produces are identical. Because she is
"reason," she simultaneously is contemplation and contemplated object.
As she is all three: contemplation, contemplated object, and "reason,"
nature produces by the mere fact that it is in her essence to be these
things. As we have shown, evidently action is a sort of contemplation;
for it is the result of the contemplation that remains immutable,
which does nothing but contemplate, and which produces by its mere
contemplation.
NATURE'S CONFESSION THAT HER MOTHER IS UNIVERSAL REASON, AND HER FATHER
THE FORMAL REASONS.
4. (3). If anybody were to ask nature why she produces, Nature, if
at all willing to listen and answer would say, "You should not have
questioned me; you should have tried to understand, keeping silence,
as I do; for I am not in the habit of speaking. What were you to
understand? Here it is. First, what is produced is the work of my
silent speculation, a contemplation effected by my nature; for, myself
being born of contemplation, mine is a contemplative nature. Besides,
that which in me contemplates, produces a work of contemplation, like
geometricians who, while contemplating, describe figures. For it is
not in describing figures, but in contemplating, that I let drop from
within me the lines which outline the forms of the bodies. I preserve
within me the disposition of my mother (the universal Soul), and that
of the principles that beget me (the formal 'reasons'). The latter,
indeed, are born of contemplation: I was begotten in the same way.
These principles gave birth to me without any action, or the mere
fact that they are more powerful reasons, and that they contemplate
themselves."