VI.7 How the Multitude of Forms Came to Be, and On the Good

But if he gave the senses too, then before that they were not perceptive, though they were souls. And if they had them when they came to be souls, and came to be in order to go into becoming, then going into becoming is innate to them. In that case it is against their nature to be away from becoming and in the intelligible; they have been made to belong to something else and to be in evil; providence exists so that they may be preserved in evil; and this is the god’s reasoning, and reasoning as a whole. But what are the starting points of reasonings? Even if they come from other reasonings, we must in any case arrive at something, or some things, prior to reasoning. What, then, are the starting points? Either perception or intellect. But not perception, not yet. Intellect, then.

For foresight aims at this rather than that, and as it were fears what is not like this; but where there is only this, there is no foresight. Reasoning, too, is this instead of that. But if only one of the two exists, what is there to reason about? How, then, could what is alone and one and simple contain, unfolded, the “this, so as not to be that”? Or “this would have happened, if not this,” and “this proved useful” and “this, once it came to be, preserved”? So he foresaw, then, and reasoned beforehand? And so too with what was said at the start, that he gave the senses and the powers for this reason, however perplexing the giving, and its manner, may be. All the same, if each activity must not be incomplete, and if it is not right to think that anything belonging to the god is anything but whole and all, then everything must be present in any one of his things.

So it must belong [to what always is, and] to the future, [as] already present. There is nothing later in that; what is already present There comes to be later in something else. If, then, the future is already present, it must be present as if foreseen for what comes later, that is, so as to need nothing then, that is, so as to lack nothing. So all things already were, and always were, and were in such a way that one could say later, “this because of this.” Extended and, as it were, unfolded, it can show this after this; but being all together, it is all this; and that means having its cause in itself as well.

Often here too the thing and the why are the same: what an eclipse is, for example. What, then, prevents each thing in the other cases too from being its own why, and this from being the substance of each? Rather, it must be so; and those who try in this way turn out to grasp the essence correctly. For what each thing is, it is because of that. I do not mean that the Form is the cause of being for each thing—that is true—but that if you unfold each Form itself toward itself, you will find the why in it. If it were inert, even if it had life, it would not entirely have the why; but since it is a Form and belongs to Intellect, where would it get the why from?note

If someone says “from Intellect,” it is not separate from Intellect, if indeed it is Intellect itself. If, then, it must have these things lacking nothing, it must not lack the why either. Intellect has the why of each of the things in it in this way; and as for the things in it, it would itself be each of the things in it. So it needs no further why of its coming to be; it has come to be together with its why and has in itself the cause of its real existence.

If, then, the co-existence of all things is all together and not random, and they must not be cut off from each other, the caused would have their causes in themselves, and each would be such as to have its cause, as it were, causelessly. If, then, they have no cause of their being, but are self-sufficient and isolated from any cause, they would be things that have their cause in themselves, with themselves. And again, if nothing There is in vain, and all the many things each has are in it, you could say why each is. So the why pre-existed and co-existed There, not as a why but as a that; or rather, both are one. For what could Intellect have that was superfluous, as if a thought of Intellect were not of this kind, as if it were an incomplete offspring? If, then, it is complete, one cannot say what it lacks, nor why this or that is not present.

So, since it is present, you could say why it is present; the why, then, is in the real existence. In each thought and act, then—in the case of man, for instance—the whole man appeared beforehand, bringing himself along with himself, and having from the start all that he has together, he is ready, whole. Then, if he is not whole, and something must be added to him, he belongs to what is generated. But he is forever, so he is whole. The man who comes to be, though, is generated.

Why, then, eyes? So that it may be all. And why eyebrows? So that it may be all. Even if you say “for the sake of preservation,” you are speaking of something in the substance that guards the substance, and saying that it contributes to it. So the substance existed before this too, and the cause, then, is part of the substance. So this is something else, but what it is belongs to the substance. All things, then, are for one another; and the whole, complete, entire substance, and its being well, are with the cause and in the cause; and the substance and the essence and the why are one.

Suppose, then, that being perceptive, and perceptive in this particular way, is contained in the Form by eternal necessity and completeness, since Intellect, if it is complete, has the causes in itself, so that we see afterward that it is rightly so. For There the cause is one with the thing and fills it out; and man There was not merely intellect, with the perceptive faculty added when he was being dispatched into becoming. In that case, how could that intellect not incline toward things here? For what would the perceptive be but what apprehends perceptibles? And how is it not absurd that There it should be perceptive from eternity, while here it perceives, and the activity of the power There is fulfilled here, when the soul becomes worse?

But if the rational principle of man is what is composed of rational soul and body, how could it be an eternal reality, when this rational principle of such a man comes to be when body and soul come together? This rational principle will indicate what is going to be, not of the kind we call man himself, but rather resembling a definition, and of a sort that does not even indicate the essence.

Being what, itself? Or rather, “living being” in the rational principle stands for “rational life.” Man, then, is rational life. Is it, then, life without soul? Either the soul will provide the rational life, and man will be an activity of soul and not a substance; or the soul will be man. But if the rational soul is man, then when the soul goes into another living being, how is it not man?

Soul of this kind, coming to be in matter of this kind, is man, since it is this, disposed in this way, as it were, even without the body. In a body, it has shaped according to itself another image of man, as much as the body could receive, just as the painter, in turn, will make of this one a still lesser man. This image has the shape and the rational principles, or the characters, the dispositions, the powers, all dim, because this is not the first man. It also has forms of other perceptions, other perceptions that seem vivid but are dimmer compared with those before them, and are images. The man above this one belongs to a more divine soul, which has a better man and more vivid perceptions. And this would be the one Plato defined, adding “using a body,” because it rides upon the soul that uses a body primarily, while it uses it secondarily.note

For when what had come to be was already perceptive, this soul followed it, giving it a clearer life. Or rather, it did not even follow, but as it were added itself. For it does not depart from the intelligible; linked with it, it holds the lower soul as it were suspended from it, mingling itself with it, rational principle with rational principle. That is why this man, dim as he was, became manifest through the illumination.

This one illuminates the second, and this one the third; and the last in a way has them all, not by becoming them but by lying alongside them. Some of us are active according to the last; for another, something of the activity comes also from the one before it; for another, the activity comes from the third as well. And each is the man according to whom he is active, though each has them all, and again does not have them.

By spirits we must mean the kind of spirits that Plato calls spirits. And when the soul that was linked with the ⟨…⟩ when it was man follows along, having chosen a beast’s nature, it gives the rational principle of that animal which was in it. For it has it, and this activity is worse.

For what prevents the power of the Soul of the All, since it is the whole rational principle, from sketching an outline in advance, even before the soul-powers come from it? The outline would be like illuminations running ahead into matter; and the soul that does the working, following such traces, would articulate the traces part by part and make them, each soul becoming what it came to by shaping itself to it, like the dancer to the drama given him. But we have been led on to this by following the sequence.

Our question was how the perceptive faculty belongs to man, and how those things do not look toward becoming. And it became clear to us, and the argument showed, that those things do not look toward the things here, but these depend on those and imitate them; that this man has his powers from that one, directed toward those things; and that these perceptibles are yoked to this man, those to that one. For those perceptibles, which we named so though they are incorporeal, are apprehended in a different way; and this perception here, which we called perception because it was of bodies, is dimmer than the apprehension There, which is clearer. That is why this man is perceptive: he is so in a lesser way, and apprehends lesser images of those things. So these perceptions are dim thinkings, and the thinkings There are clear perceptions.

If, then, it existed before coming to be, and was not thought in order that it might come to be, the one who had the horse There did not have it with him by looking toward the things here; nor did he have it, and the others, in order to make the things here. Those things simply were, and these followed on them of necessity; for it was not possible to stop at the things There. Who could have stopped a power able both to remain and to proceed?

Or rather: neither of the two in the dyad could be wholly one; each in turn had to be at least two, and so again with those. Then too, there was motion in the first dyad, and rest; there was Intellect too, and life was in it: complete Intellect and complete life. So it was not like one intellect, but all, containing all the individual intellects, as great as all of them together, and greater. And it lived not like one soul but like all, with greater power for making the individual souls. And it was an all-complete living being, not containing only man in itself; for [then] only man would be here.

Or rather: since thinking is different There in the human being and in the other animals, reasoning is different too. For in a way there are many works of discursive thought in the other animals as well. Why, then, are they not equally rational? And why are human beings not equally rational compared with one another? We must bear in mind that the many lives, which are, as it were, movements, and the many thoughts could not all be the same. The lives had to be different, and the thoughts likewise. And they differ, in a way, by being brighter and clearer, and, according to their nearness to the first things, as first, second and third.

That is why, of the thoughts, some are gods, others are a second kind, in which what is here called rational belongs, and after these comes what was called irrational. But There even what is called irrational was a rational principle, and what lacks intellect was intellect, since the one who thinks horse is intellect, and the thinking of horse was intellect.

For it is actually that, but potentially it is all things; and we take each one according to what it actually is. What it actually is is its last stage. So this intellect’s last stage is horse: where it came to a halt, as it proceeded ever toward a lesser life, is horse, while another halted further down. For as the powers unfold, they always leave something behind, above. They proceed by letting something go; and in letting go, because of the deficiency of the animal that has appeared out of what is lacking, they find one thing after another to add. For example, since there is no longer enough for life, nails appeared, and curved claws, or jagged teeth, or the nature of horn. So wherever intellect came down, there it could lift its head again by the self-sufficiency of nature, and find lying within itself the cure for what is lacking.

Take shapes—a human being’s, for example: out of how many differences it is made, and yet what stands over them all is one. They are better and worse than one another, eye and finger, but they belong to one thing; and a part is worse with respect to the whole, but it is better that it is so. The rational principle, too, is animal and also something else, which is not the same as animal. And virtue, too, is both what is common and what is particular, and the whole is fine, though the common element is undifferentiated.

If, then, the enmattered rational principle of the plant, by which the plant is what it is, is a particular kind of life and a kind of soul, and the rational principle is a single thing, then either this is the first plant, or it is not, and before it there is the first plant, from which this one too comes. For that one is one, while these are many and necessarily come from one. If so, that one must live far more primarily and be just this, plant, while these come from it and live in a second and third degree, following its trace. But how is earth There? What is it to be earth? And what is the earth There that has life? Or rather, first: what is this earth here—that is, what is its being? There must be some shape and rational principle here too.

Now in the case of the plant, even its rational principle here was alive.

Having found that the crafting nature seated in the earth is life in a rational principle, we could easily be convinced from there that the earth There lives far more primarily, and is a rational life of earth, earth itself and earth in the primary sense, from which the earth here also comes. And if fire too is a rational principle in matter, and so are the other things of this kind, and fire does not come about by chance—for where would it come from? Not from friction, as one might think: friction happens when there is already fire in the All, and the bodies rubbed together have it; nor is matter potentially fire in such a way that fire comes from matter itself—if, then, what makes it must act according to a rational principle, as what gives it shape, what could it be? Or rather, a soul able to make fire; and that is life and rational principle, both one and the same.

That is why Plato too says that there is a soul in each of these, in no other way than as making this perceptible fire. So what makes fire here is a fiery life, a truer fire. Then the fire beyond, being more fire, would be more in life: so fire itself lives too. The same argument holds for the others, water and air.

And it is probably like what happens with the fluids in us, blood for instance. Flesh seems to have soul, and so does whatever becomes flesh from the blood; but blood, because it does not provide perception, seems not to have it. And yet it must be in it too, since nothing forcible happens to it; rather, it is ready to stand apart from the soul that is present in it—as we must suppose is the case with the three elements too. Indeed, those animals that are made of more compacted air have the property of not feeling it when something is done to them. And just as air passes through light, which is steady and stays as long as it stays itself, in this way they pass through the soul that surrounds them and do not pass through it; and the others likewise.

For how could what is in a living thing not be living, when even here it is? How, then, could every animal not necessarily be There? For as each of the great parts is, so necessarily is the nature of the animals in them. So in whatever way heaven is and exists There, in that way all the animals in heaven are and exist There too, and it is impossible that they should not; otherwise that heaven will not be either. So whoever asks where the animals come from is asking where heaven There comes from; and that is asking where the living being comes from; and that is the same as asking where life comes from, and all life, and all soul, and the whole of Intellect—since there is no poverty or lack There, but all things are filled with life and, as it were, seething.

Their flow, so to speak, is from one source—not like some single breath or single warmth, but as if there were one quality that held and preserved all qualities in itself: sweetness together with fragrance, and at the same time the quality of wine, the powers of every flavor, the sights of colors, and everything that touch knows. Let there also be everything that hearing hears, every melody and every rhythm.

For if it has no variation, and no otherness wakes it to life, it would not be an activity either; such a state would not differ at all from non-activity. And even if there were motion of that kind, it would be life in only one way, not in every way. But everything must live, and from every side, and nothing must fail to live. So it must move toward all things—or rather, have moved. If something simple were to move, it has only that one thing: either it is itself and has not advanced to anything, or, if it has advanced, it is something else, while the first remains; so there are two. And if this is the same as that, it remains one and has not proceeded; but if it is different, it has proceeded with otherness and made, out of something same and something other, a third thing that is one.

But it is itself everywhere; so its wandering is a wandering that remains. Its wandering is in the plain of truth, from which it does not step out. It holds the whole of it, having taken possession of it and made it a sort of place for itself to move in; and the place is the same as that whose place it is. This plain is varied, so that it may also travel through it; and if it were not varied in every respect and always, then insofar as it was not varied, it would stand still.

It always keeps the same course through things that are not the same, because it does not change; its being “in the same way and in the same respect” goes along with the others. For if “in the same way and in the same respect” did not concern the others, it would be wholly idle, and what is active and its activity would be nowhere. But it is also itself the others, so that it is itself all. And if it is itself, it is all; if not, it is not itself. And if it is itself all, it is all because it is all things; and there is nothing that does not contribute to all things, nothing of it that is not other, so that, being other, this too may contribute. For if it were not other but the same, it would diminish its being by not contributing its own nature to its completion.

And this is how the unlimited is in Intellect: because it is one-many—not like one house, but like a rational principle that is many within itself. Within the single figure of Intellect, as within an outline, it holds outlines inside, and figures again inside those, and powers and thoughts; and the division does not run in a straight line, but always inward—as the natures of animals are contained in the whole living being, and again others, down to smaller animals and lesser powers, until it stops at an indivisible species. The division is present without their being confused, although they are directed toward one. Rather, this is what is called Friendship in the All—not the friendship in this All; for that one imitates, being a friendship of things that stand apart. The true one is all things being one and never being separated. And he says that what is in this heaven is separated.

For that is the Good, while Intellect is good by having its life in contemplating; and what it contemplates is good-like—the very things it acquired when it contemplated the nature of the Good. They came into it, though, not as they were There, but as it itself held them. For that is the principle, and it is from that that they are in this, and it is this that made them from that. For it was not lawful that, looking at that, it should think nothing; nor, again, that it should think the things in that, for then it would not itself be generating. So it had from that the power to generate, and to be filled with its own offspring, that one giving what it did not itself have. But from that, which is one, many things came to it; for the power it received it was unable to hold, so it broke it up and made the one many, so that it could bear it part by part.

So whatever it generated came from the power of the Good and was good-like, and it is itself good, made of good-like things, a varied good. That is why, if someone were to liken it to a living, varied sphere, or to imagine it as a thing that is all faces, shining with living faces, or as all the pure souls running together into the same place, not lacking but having all that is theirs, and the whole Intellect seated at their summit, so that the place is lit with intellectual light—imagining it so, he would see it as one who is, in a way, outside, seeing another. But one must become that oneself, and make oneself the vision.

When it looked toward the Good, did it think that One as many, and, being one itself, think it by dividing it into many within itself, because it could not think it whole all at once? But it was not yet Intellect when it looked at that; it looked without thinking.

Just as the sun, being the cause, for perceptible things, of their being seen and of their coming to be, is in a way the cause of sight too—and so is neither sight nor the things that come to be—so the nature of the Good, being the cause of being and of Intellect, and light, by analogy, to the visible things There and to the one who sees, is neither the beings nor Intellect, but their cause, and gives them their being thought by its own light shed on the beings and on Intellect. So as it was being filled it was coming to be, and once filled it was, and in the same moment it was completed and saw. Its principle was what it was before it was filled; but there was another principle, as if from outside, the one that filled it, from which it was, as it were, stamped as it was filled.

So it had life and did not need a giver that was varied; and the life was a trace of that, not that one’s life. Looking toward that, it was unbounded; once it had looked There, it was bounded, though that has no bound. For as soon as it looks to something one, it is bounded by it and holds in itself bound, limit and form. The form was in what was shaped, while what shaped it was shapeless. The bound did not come from outside, like something laid around a magnitude; it was the bound of all that life, which is many and unlimited, as one would expect of what shone out from such a nature. And it was not the life of some particular thing; for then it would have been bounded already as that of an individual.

And it sits upon them, not to be established on them, but to establish them, having seen a form of the first things, which itself is formless. And Intellect in turn becomes light for soul, shining into it, as that is for Intellect; and when Intellect too bounds the soul, it makes it rational, giving it a trace of what it had. So Intellect too is a trace of that. But since Intellect is form, and is in extension and multiplicity, that is shapeless and formless; for that is how it gives form. If that were a form, Intellect would be a rational principle. But the First had to be in no way many; for its multiplicity would then have depended on something else again, prior to it.

For coming from that is not enough to make them the same; the common element must be in the things themselves. Something not the same could come from the same source, or what is given in the same way could become different in those who receive it; since what goes into the first activity is one thing, what is given to the first activity is another, and what comes after these is different again. Or rather, nothing prevents each from being good-like, but more so in one respect. In what respect most, then? But first we must look at this: is life good insofar as it is just this, life, viewed bare and stripped? Or is it the life that comes from it—and is “from it” something other than life of that kind? Again, then, what is such life? Or rather: the Good’s. But it was not the Good’s; it came from it.

But if in that life there is something from that, and it is the life that really is, and we must say that nothing that comes from that is worthless, and that insofar as it is life it is good, then of the true Intellect too, that first one, we must say that it is good; and it is clear that each Form too is good and good-like.

For when the same thing is predicated of different things, nothing prevents it from being present in their being, but one can still take it separately in thought—as with “animal” in the case of man and horse, and “hot” in the case of water and fire: the first as a genus, the second as present primarily in one and secondarily in the other. Otherwise each of the two, or each one, would be called good only by homonymy. Is the good, then, present in their being? Or rather, each is good as a whole, not good in respect of some one thing. How, then? As parts? But the good is without parts.

Or rather, it is itself one, but this is good in this way, that in that. For the first activity is good, and what is bounded upon it is good, and the two together: the first because it came to be from it, the second because it is an ordering that comes from it, the third because it is both together. So they come from it, and none is the same—as if from the same person came voice and walking and something else, all done rightly. Or rather, here it is because there is order and rhythm; but There, what? But someone might say that here the “well” comes entirely from outside, since the things about which the order is are different, while There the things themselves are good too. But why are the things themselves good? We must not let the question go by trusting that they come from that. We must indeed grant that, coming from that, they are precious; but the argument longs to grasp in what respect their goodness lies.

For in worse things, it seems, we could recognize a nature of this kind, even though they do not have it purely, by setting it beside what is worse still. But There, where nothing is bad and the better things are by themselves, we will be at a loss. Is it, then, because reason seeks the “why,” while these things are good of themselves, that it is at a loss for the “why,” since the “that” is the “why”? For even if we named something else as cause, the same difficulty would arise, since reason does not get There. Still, we must not give up, in case something should appear to us if we travel by another road.

So soul judges, and it desires Intellect: it judges justice better than injustice and each form of virtue above each form of vice, and it ranks first the same things it chooses. But if it desired Intellect alone, perhaps more argument would have been needed from us to show that Intellect is not the ultimate, and that not all things desire Intellect, but all things desire the Good. Of the things that do not have intellect, not all seek to acquire intellect; while those that have intellect do not stop there, but go on seeking the Good. And they seek intellect by reasoning, but the Good even before reason. And if soul also desires life, and to be forever, and to be active, what it desires would not be desired as intellect, but as good, and from the good, and leading to the good; since life too is desired in this way.

For just as with bodies, though light is mixed into them, another light is still needed for the light in them to show, so too with the things There, though they have much light, another, better light is needed, so that they may be seen both by themselves and by another.

But when a kind of warmth comes into it from There, it gains strength and wakes up and truly grows wings; and though it is all aflutter over what lies close at hand, it is nonetheless lifted, as if by memory, toward something else, greater. And as long as there is anything higher than what is present, it rises, carried upward by nature, lifted by the one who gave the love.

Or rather: because this one is more desirable; and that is because it has soul; and that is because it is more good-like; and that is because it is colored, somehow, by the light of the Good, and, so colored, has woken up and been lifted, and lifts what it has, and, as far as it can, makes it good and wakes it up.

And if evils come later, in things that have not shared in it in any single respect, among the last things, and there is nothing beyond evils in the direction of the worse, then evils would stand opposed to it with nothing in between to temper the opposition. So this would be the Good. For either there is no good at all, or, if there must be one, it would be this and nothing else. And if someone were to say that it does not exist, then there would be no evil either; things would then be indifferent to choice by nature—and that is impossible. The other things people call goods are referred to this; but it is referred to nothing. What, then, does it do, being such? Or rather, it made Intellect, it made life, and from it came souls and the other things that share in reason or intellect or life. As for what is the source and principle of these, who could say how good it is, and how great?

But what does it do now? Or rather, even now it keeps those things in being, and makes the thinking things think and the living things live, breathing intellect into them, breathing life into them, and, if something cannot live, being.

In this connection we must also ask whether the good is good by being one’s own or by something else; and, further, whether the good belongs entirely to another, or the good is also good to itself. Or rather, whatever is good is not good to itself, but necessarily to another. And to what kind of nature is it good? For there is a nature to which nothing is good. And we must not pass over what some difficult person might perhaps say: You people, why do you put on such airs with your words, up and down calling life good and calling Intellect good, and yet saying it is beyond these? Why should Intellect be good? Or what good would the one who thinks the Forms themselves get from contemplating each of them?

If he were deceived and taking pleasure in them, he might perhaps call them good, and life good because it is pleasant; but if he stood in a state without pleasure, why would he call them goods? Because he himself exists? But what fruit would he reap from existing? Or what difference would there be between existing and not existing at all, unless one made love of oneself the cause of these? So it is because of this deception, which is natural, and the fear of destruction, that people have come to believe in the positing of goods.

And this is not strange. For he was not seeking the first good, but ours; and in general, being the good of something else, it is for him something other than that thing, since that thing is deficient and perhaps composite. That is why what is solitary and alone has no good, but is good in another and greater way. So the good must be desirable; it does not, however, become good by being desirable, but becomes desirable by being good.

And each of these does something for the things whose goods they are: some give order and arrangement, others life, others understanding and living well; and for Intellect, the Good does something—the Good, which we say comes to it too, both because there is an activity from it and because even now it gives what is called light. What this is, we will see later.

That it has attained it is confirmed when it becomes better, and has no regret, and comes to be filled, and stays with it and seeks nothing else. That is why pleasure is not self-sufficient: one is not content with the same thing, for it is not the same just because it is pleasure again; what one takes pleasure in is always something different. The good one chooses, then, must not be the feeling that goes with attaining it. That is why whoever thinks this is the good remains empty, having only the feeling one might have had from the good.

That is why no one would accept the feeling without having its object—taking pleasure, for example, in a child as present when the child is not present. Nor, I think, would those who find the good in bodily filling accept taking pleasure as if eating while not eating, or as if having sex while not being with the one he wanted, or, in general, while not doing it.

And if a thing is also good for itself, then much more would its perfection be good for it, and its form, and what is better than it—that being such by its own nature, and good for the thing too, because it makes the thing good as well. But why will it be good for it? Because it is most akin to it? No: because it is a portion of good. That is why pure beings, and those that are better, have a greater affinity with themselves. It is absurd, then, to ask why something that is good is good for itself, as though it had to stand outside its own nature in relation to itself and not love itself as good. But in the case of the simple we must consider this: where there is no “one thing and another” at all, whether its affinity with itself is a good for itself.

As it is, if this is rightly said, then the ascent also finds the good lying in a certain nature; it is not desire that makes the good, but desire arises because it is good. And those who acquire it get something, and something pleasant in the acquiring. But the good is to be chosen and sought for itself [even] if no pleasure followed.

If, then, evil is matter, that has been dealt with. But if it is something else—vice, say—then if its being acquired perception, will the good still be what is akin, relative to the better? Or rather, it was not the vice that did the choosing, but what is made bad by it. And if being and evil are the same, how will this choose the good? But then, if evil acquired perception of itself, would it love itself? And how will what is not lovable be lovable? For we certainly did not place the good in what is akin. So much for that.

But if the good is everywhere form, and the higher one climbs the more it is form—for soul is more form than the form of the body, and of soul one part is more so, another still more, and Intellect more than soul—then the good would advance toward the opposite of matter, toward what is, as it were, being purified and putting matter off: in each case as far as each can, but most of all for what puts off everything of matter. And so the nature of the Good, having fled all matter—or rather, never having come anywhere near it in any way at all—would have taken refuge in the formless nature, from which the first form comes. But about this later.

It is the argument of someone who is puzzled about what the possessor of intellect would gain toward his share of good—someone who is not struck at all when he hears these things, because he has no understanding of them: either he hears a mere name, or he takes each of them to be something else, or he is looking for something perceptible and places the good in money or the like. To him we must say that, in slighting these things, he admits that he himself posits some good, but is at a loss how these things fit the notion he has of it. For one cannot say “not this” while being entirely without experience of the thing and without any notion of it. Perhaps he even divines what is beyond Intellect. Then, if in approaching the Good, or what is close to it, he fails to recognize it, let him come to a notion of it from its opposites. Or will he not even count mindlessness as bad? And yet everyone chooses to think, and takes pride in thinking.

The senses bear witness too, since they want to be knowledge. If, then, intellect is precious and fine, and the first Intellect most of all, what could anyone imagine—if anyone could—of its begetter and father? And whoever slights being and living testifies against himself and against all his own experiences. If someone is disgusted with life, it is life mixed with death that he is disgusted with, not true life.

Another, different from this, would mix pleasure with intellect and posit this as a single substrate made of both, so that by acquiring, or even just seeing, an intellect of that kind, we would have the good; for what is solitary and alone, it says, can neither come to be nor be choosable as good. How, then, could intellect be mixed with pleasure into a single completed nature? That no one would think bodily pleasure could be mixed with intellect is surely obvious to everyone; but neither could any irrational joys of the soul.note

For what is truly welcome is There, and what is most lovable and most longed for—not coming to be, not in motion; and its cause is what has tinged these things, lit them up and made them bright. That is why he adds truth to the mixture, and puts what will measure it before it; and he says that the proportion and beauty in the mixture came from There into the beautiful. So it is in this respect that we too would have our share in this. But what is truly desirable for us is, in one way, ourselves, for ourselves, as we lead ourselves up to the best of ourselves: this, namely, the proportioned and beautiful, a composite form, a life that is vivid, intellectual and beautiful.

And just as here lovers shape themselves to resemble the one they love, making their bodies more comely and bringing their souls into likeness, wanting not to fall short, as far as they can, of the beloved’s moderation and the rest of his virtue—or they would be rejected by beloveds of that kind, and it is those who resemble them who are able to be with them—in the same way soul too loves him, moved to love by him from the beginning.

And the soul that has its love ready to hand does not wait to be reminded by the beautiful things here. Having love, even if it does not know it has it, it is always searching, and wanting to be carried toward that, it looks down on the things here; and seeing the beautiful things in this All, it is suspicious of them, because it sees them in flesh and bodies, sullied by their present dwelling, divided up by magnitudes, and not the beautiful things themselves—for those, being what they are, would never dare to step into the mire of bodies and soil and obliterate themselves. And when it sees them flowing away as well, then it knows completely that what played over them they had from elsewhere.

Then it is carried There, clever at finding what it loves, and it would not give up before it had taken hold of it—unless someone took away its love as well. There it saw all things beautiful and true, and it grew stronger, filled with the life of being; and having itself become what really is, and having truly gained understanding [of being], being near, it perceives what it has long been seeking.

So this is none of the beings, and all things: none, because the beings come after; all, because they come from it. And what magnitude could something have that can make all things? It would be unlimited. But if unlimited, it would have no magnitude; for magnitude belongs among the last things, and if it is to make magnitude too, it must not have it itself. And the greatness of being is not a quantity; something else, after him, could have magnitude.

So, [being] the power of all that is beautiful, it is the flower of beauty, a beauty that makes beauty. For it generates beauty and makes it more beautiful by the superabundance of beauty that comes from it, so that it is the principle of beauty and the limit of beauty. Being the principle of beauty, it makes beautiful that of which it is the principle, and makes it beautiful not in shape: what has come to be is itself shapeless, though in another way it is in shape. For what is called shape is shape only in something else; by itself it is shapeless. So it is what participates in beauty that is shaped, not beauty.

But since Intellect thinks something particular, it is diminished, even if it takes together all that is in the intelligible. If it takes each, it has one intelligible shape; if all together, a kind of varied shape, as it were—still in need, in need of the sort of thing one must contemplate as being above that all-beautiful one, varied and not varied: that which soul reaches for without saying why it longs for such a thing. But reason says that this is the real thing, if indeed the nature of the best and of the most lovable lies in what is entirely formless. That is why, whatever you bring to form and show to the soul, it seeks beyond it something else, what gave it shape. So reason says that what has shape, and shape, and form, are all measured; and this is not all, nor self-sufficient, nor beautiful of itself; this too is mixed.

And matter is necessarily furthest away, since of itself it has not even one of the last shapes. If, then, it is not matter that is lovable but what has been formed by the form, and the form on matter comes from soul, and soul is more form and more lovable, and Intellect is more form than soul and more lovable still, then we must posit that the first nature of beauty is formless.

And all the other things it used to delight in—offices, powers, wealth, beauty, sciences—it says it looks down on them; and it would not say so if it had not met with things better than these. Nor is it afraid that something may happen to it while it is with that, or even while merely seeing it. And if everything else around it were to perish, it would actually be glad, so as to be with this alone: such is the joy it has come to.

And perhaps the image would preserve the analogy if it were not a human being who came upon the one contemplating the contents of the house, but a god—and a god who did not appear to sight, but filled the soul of the one contemplating. And so Intellect [must] have one power for thinking, by which it looks at what is in itself, and another by which it looks at what is beyond it, with a kind of direct apprehension and reception; by this it first only saw, and later, in seeing, acquired intellect and is one. The first is the vision of intellect in its right mind; the second is intellect in love.

The Good, spread out over them and fitted to the union of both, running over them and uniting the two, is upon them, giving them a blessed perception and vision, lifting them so high that they are neither in place nor in anything else in which one thing naturally is in another. For he himself is not anywhere either: the intelligible place is in him, but he is not in another. That is why the soul does not move then either, because that does not; nor, then, is it soul, because that does not live, but is above living; nor is it intellect, because that does not think—for it must be made like it. And it does not think that one, because that one is not thought either.

We are taught by analogies and abstractions, by knowledge of the things that come from it, and by certain ascents; we are brought on our way toward it by purifications and virtues and adornments, by setting foot in the intelligible and settling ourselves There and feasting on what is There—so that one becomes at once spectator and spectacle, oneself of oneself and of the others, and, having become being and intellect and the complete living being, no longer looks at it from outside. Having become this, one is near, and that comes next, and it is already close, shining over all the intelligible.

There one lets go of all study; having been educated up to this point and established in beauty, one goes on thinking, within the place where one is. But carried out by the very wave of intellect, as it were, and lifted on high by it as it swells, one suddenly saw, without seeing how. The vision filled the eyes with light and did not make them see something else through it: the light itself was what was seen. For in that there was not one thing seen and another its light, nor intellect and object of thought, but a radiance that generates these later and lets them be beside it. He himself is radiance only, generating Intellect, not quenching himself in generating it, but remaining himself, while that came to be because this is. For if this were not such, that would not have come into existence.

If they say he must think because he is actuality and not potentiality, then if he is a being that always thinks, and they call him actuality for this reason, they are still speaking of two things, the being and the thinking, and not of something simple; they are adding something different to him, as seeing in actuality is added to eyes, even if they always see. But if they say he is in actuality because he is actuality and thinking, then, being thinking, he would not think, just as motion would not move. “What, then? Don’t you yourselves say that those things are being and actuality?”

But we agree that these are many and different from one another, while the First is simple; and to what comes from another we grant thinking, and as it were the seeking of its own being, and of itself and of what made it, and say that, having turned back in the vision and come to recognize it, it is now rightly intellect. But what neither came to be nor has [anything else] before it, but always [is] what it is—what reason will it have to think? That is why Plato rightly says it is above intellect. For an intellect that does not think is mindless: where nature has given thinking, if a thing does not do this, it is mindless. But where there is no work, why would anyone bring in a work and, by way of privation, accuse it of not doing it? It is as if someone called him unskilled in medicine.

He has no work, because there is nothing incumbent on him to do. He is sufficient himself and need seek nothing beyond himself, being above all things; he is sufficient to himself and to the others by being himself what he is.

Will it then say only “good”—adding what? For one might think “good” without “is,” if one did not predicate it of something else; but one who thinks himself as good will certainly think “I am the Good”; otherwise he will think good, but the thought that he himself is this will not be present to him. So the thinking must be “I am good.” And if [the] thinking itself is the Good, it will not be thinking of himself but of good, and he himself will not be the Good: the thinking will. But if the thinking of the Good is other than the Good, then the Good already exists before the thinking of it.

And if the Good exists before the thinking, then, being self-sufficient for being good, it would have no need of the thinking about itself. So it does not think itself as good—then as what? Or rather, nothing else is present to it; there will be a kind of simple direct apprehension of itself by itself.

And in thinking, he becomes many: intelligible, thinking, moving, and whatever else belongs to intellect. Besides this, it is fitting to see the point already made elsewhere: that every act of thinking, if it is to be thinking, must be something varied, while what is simple and entirely the same, like a single movement—if it were the sort of thing contact is—has nothing intellectual about it. What, then? Will he know neither the other things nor himself, but stand there in solemn majesty? The other things come after him, and he was what he was before them; and thinking of them would be acquired, and not always the same, and of things that do not stand still; and even if he thinks the things that stand still, he is many. For it surely won’t be that the later things have being along with their thinking, while his thoughts are only empty contemplations.

His providence consists sufficiently in his being the one from whom all things come. And his relation to himself—how, if he does not think himself? No: he will stand in solemn majesty. Plato, speaking about being, said that it will think and will not stand in solemn majesty—meaning that being thinks, while what does not think will stand in solemn majesty. He said “will stand” because he could not express it otherwise, but he held that what transcends thinking is more solemn, and truly solemn.note

Being a power of generating, it generated on its own, and its activity is being; it is together with being and in it, and thinking and this being are not different. Even if this nature thinks itself, the thought and the thinker are not different, except in account, being a multiplicity, as has been shown in many places. And this is the first activity, which brought a hypostasis into being; and being an image of something else, it is the image of something so great that it came to be being. If it belonged to that and did not come from that, it would be nothing other than something of that, and would not be a hypostasis on its own. Being the first activity and the first thinking, this could have neither activity nor thinking before it.

So if one passes on from this being and thinking, one will arrive neither at being nor at thinking, but beyond being and thinking, at something wonderful, which has in itself neither being nor thinking, but is solitary, itself by itself, needing nothing of what comes from it. For it was not by first being active that it generated activity—then the activity would have existed before it came to be; nor by thinking did it generate thinking—then, already being, it would have thought before thinking came to be.

But if someone makes this too at once thinker and thought, being and thinking joined with being, and wants in this way to make it think itself, it will need something else, and this before it. For activity and thinking, being either the perfection of another substrate or something existing together with it, itself has another nature before it, which is why thinking is reasonable for it: it has something to think, because there is another before it; and when it thinks itself, it as it were learns what it got within itself from its vision of the other. But what has neither anything else before it nor anything with it that comes from another—what will it think, or how will it think itself? For what was it seeking? What was it longing for? Its own power, how great it is, as though that were outside it, in so far as it thought?

I mean: if the power of it that it learned was one thing, and the power by which it learned another. But if they are one, what is it seeking?

But if intellect, thinking and intelligible are the same, by becoming entirely one they will make themselves vanish into one another; and if distinguished by otherness, it will once again not be that. So in the case of the best nature, which needs no help, we must leave everything else aside entirely; for whatever you add, you have diminished by the addition the nature that needs nothing. For us thinking was a fine thing, because soul needs to have intellect; and for Intellect, because being is the same for it, and thinking made it. So it must be together with thinking and always grasp an understanding of itself: that this is this, that the two are one. But if it were only one, it would have sufficed for itself and would have had no need to grasp anything.

Nor, then, is thinking, if being is here, and the first thinking in the proper sense and being are both together. That is why there is no account of him, no perception, no knowledge: because nothing can be predicated of him as present in him.

That is why it is rightly said in this sense too: “Around the king of all are all things, and all things are for his sake.” By “all things” he means the beings, and “for his sake” because he is the cause of their being and they reach out for him, as it were—he who is other than all things and has nothing of what is present in them; or they would no longer be all things, if anything of the others that come after him were present to him. So if intellect too is one of all things, intellect is not in him either. In calling him the cause of all beautiful things, he evidently places beauty in the Forms, and him above all this beauty. Placing these second, he says that the things that come after them are attached to them as third; and placing around the third the things generated from the third, he clearly means this cosmos, attached to Soul.

With Soul attached to Intellect, and Intellect to the Good, all things are thus attached to that through intermediaries—some near it, others neighbors of those near—while perceptible things, attached to Soul, stand at the furthest remove.