7. When intelligence is in actualization it can see in two ways, as
does the eye.[274] First, the eye may see the form of the visible
object; second, it may see the light by which this object is seen.
This light itself is visible, but it is different from the form of
the object; it reveals the form and is itself seen with this form, to
which it is united. Consequently it itself is not seen distinctly,
because the eye is entirely devoted to the illuminated object. When
there is nothing but light, it is seen in an intuitive manner, though
it be still united to some other object. For if it were isolated from
every other thing, it could not be perceived. Thus the light of the
sun would escape our eye if its seat were not a solid mass. My meaning
will best appear by considering the whole sun as light. Then light
will not reside in the form of any other visible object, and it will
possess no property except that of being visible; for other visible
objects are not pure light. Likewise in intellectual intuition (sight
of the mind) intelligence sees intelligible objects by means of the
light shed on them by the First; and the Intelligence, while seeing
these objects, really sees intelligible light. But, as Intelligence
directs its attention to the enlightened object, it does not clearly
see the Principle that enlightens them. If, on the contrary, it forget
the objects it sees, in the process of contemplating only the radiance
that renders them visible, it sees both the light itself, and its
Principle. But it is not outside of itself that that Intelligence
contemplates intelligible light. It then resembles the eye which,
without considering an exterior and foreign light, before even
perceiving it, is suddenly struck by a radiance which is proper to it,
or by a ray which radiates of itself, and which appears to it in the
midst of obscurity. The case is still similar when the eye, in order to
see no other objects, closes the eye-lids, so as to draw its light from
itself; or when, pressed by the hand, it perceives the light which it
possesses within itself. Then, without seeing anything exterior the eye
sees, even more than at any other moment, for it sees the light. The
other objects which the eye heretofore saw, though they were luminous,
were not light itself. Likewise, when Intelligence, so to speak, closes
its eye to the other objects, concentrating in itself, and seeing
nothing, it sees not a foreign light that shines in foreign forms, but
its own light which suddenly radiates interiorly, with a clear radiance.