What sort of an image does Intelligence then afford? This is a material
question because we know that any image of Intelligence supplied by
anything else would be imperfect. Therefore this image of itself given
by Intelligence also could not be a genuine image; it can be no more
than what is any stray piece of gold in respect to gold in general,
namely, a sample. But if the gold which falls under our perception be
not pure, we have to purify it either by our labor or by our thought,
observing that it can never be gold in general that we can examine, but
gold in particular, considered in an individual mass.[212] Likewise (in
the subject we are studying) our starting-point must be our purified
intelligence, or, if you prefer, the divinities themselves, considering
the kind of intelligence indwelling in them; for they are all venerable
and unimaginably beautiful. To what do they owe their perfection? To
Intelligence, which acts in them with sufficient force to manifest
them. They do not indeed owe it to the beauty of their body; for
their divinity does not consist in the possession of a body[213]; the
divinities therefore owe their character to their intelligence. Now
all divinities are beautiful, because they are not wise at certain
times, and at other times unwise. They possess wisdom by an impassible
intelligence, that is immutable and pure. They know everything; not
indeed human things, but those which are proper to them, the things
which are divine, and all those that intelligence contemplates.[214]