On the other hand, the intelligible entities are either deprived of
feeling, life and intelligence, or they are intelligent. If they
be intelligent, they, like truth, fuse with intelligence into the
primary Intelligence. In this case we shall have to inquire into
the mutual relations of intelligence, intelligible entity, and
truth. Do these constitute but one single entity, or two? What in
the world could intelligible entities be, if they be without life
or intelligence? They are surely neither propositions, axioms, nor
words, because in this case they would be enunciating things different
from themselves, and would not be things themselves; thus, when you
say that the good is beautiful, it would be understood that these
two notions are foreign to each other. Nor can we think that the
intelligibles--for instance, beauty and justice--are entities that
are simple, but completely separate from each other; because the
intelligible entity would have lost its unity, and would no longer
dwell within a unitary subject. It would be dispersed into a crowd
of particular entities, and we would be forced to consider into what
localities these divers elements of the intelligible were scattered.
Besides, how could intelligence embrace these elements and follow
them in their vicissitudes? How could intelligence remain permanent?
How could it fix itself on identical objects? What will be the forms
or figures of the intelligibles? Will they be like statues of gold,
or like images and effigies made of some other material? In this
case, the intelligence that would contemplate them would not differ
from sensation. What would be the differentiating cause that would
make of one justice, and of the other something else? Last, and most
important, an assertion that the intelligible entities are external to
Intelligence would imply that in thus contemplating objects exterior
to itself Intelligence will not gain a genuine knowledge of them,
having only a false intuition of them. Since, under this hypothesis,
true realities will remain exterior to Intelligence, the latter,
while contemplating them, will not possess them; and in knowing them
will grasp only their images. Thus reduced to perceiving only images
of truth, instead of possessing truth itself, it will grasp only
deceptions, and will not reach realities. In this case (intelligence
will be in the dilemma) of either acknowledging that it grasps only
deceptions, and thus does not possess truth; or intelligence will be
ignorant of this, being persuaded it possesses truth, when it really
lacks it. By thus doubly deceiving itself, intelligence will by that
very fact be still further from the truth. That is, in my opinion, the
reason why sensation cannot attain the truth. Sensation is reduced
to opinion[248] because it is a receptive[249] power--as indeed is
expressed by the word "opinion"[250];--and because sensation receives
something foreign, since the object, from which sensation receives what
it possesses remains external to sensation. Therefore, to seek truth
outside of intelligence is to deprive intelligence of truth or verity
of intelligence. It would amount to annihilating Intelligence, and the
truth (which was to dwell within it) will no longer subsist anywhere.