41.Intellection seems to have been given as an aid to the diviner but weaker beings, an eye to the blind.But the eye itself need not see Being since it is itself the light; what must take the light through the eye needs the light because of its darkness.If, then, intellection is the light and light does not need the light, surely that brilliance (The First) which does not need light can have no need of intellection, will not add this to its nature.
What could it do with intellection? What could even intellection need and add to itself for the purpose of its act? It has no self-awareness; there is no need.It is no duality but, rather, a manifold, consisting of itself, its intellective act, distinct from itself, and the inevitable third, the object of intellection.No doubt since knower, knowing, and known, are identical, all merges into a unity: but the distinction has existed and, once more, such a unity cannot be the First; we must put away all otherness from the Supreme which can need no such support; anything we add is so much lessening of what lacks nothing.
To us intellection is a boon since the soul needs it; to the Intellectual-Principle it is appropriate as being one thing with the very essence of the principle constituted by the intellectual Act so that principle and act coincide in a continuous self-consciousness carrying the assurance of identity, of the unity of the two.But pure unity must be independent, in need of no such assurance.
"Know yourself" is a precept for those who, being manifold, have the task of appraising themselves so as to become aware of the number and nature of their constituents, some or all of which they ignore as they ignore their very principle and their manner of being.The First on the contrary if it have content must exist in a way too great to have any knowledge, intellection, perception of it.
To itself it is nothing; accepting nothing, self-sufficing, it is not even a good to itself: to others it is good for they have need of it; but it could not lack itself: it would be absurd to suppose The Good standing in need of goodness.
It does not see itself: seeing aims at acquisition: all this it abandons to the subsequent: in fact nothing found elsewhere can be There; even Being cannot be There.Nor therefore has it intellection which is a thing of the lower sphere where the first intellection, the only true, is identical with Being.Reason, perception, intelligence, none of these can have place in that Principle in which no presence can be affirmed.
42.Faced by the difficulty of placing these powers, you must in reason allocate to the secondaries what you count august:
secondaries must not be foisted upon the First, or tertiaries upon the secondaries.Secondaries are to be ranged under the First, tertiaries under the secondaries: this is giving everything its place, the later dependent on their priors, those priors free.
This is included in that true saying "About the King of All, all has being and in view of Him all is": we are to understand from the attribution of all things to Him, and from, the words "in view of Him"that He is their cause and they reach to Him as to something differing from them all and containing nothing that they contain: for certainly His very nature requires that nothing of the later be in Him.
Thus, Intellectual-Principle, finding place in the universe, cannot have place in Him.Where we read that He is the cause of all beauty we are clearly to understand that beauty depends upon the Forms, He being set above all that is beautiful here.The Forms are in that passage secondaries, their sequels being attached to them as dependent thirds: it is clear thus that by "the products of the thirds" is meant this world, dependent upon soul.
Soul dependent upon Intellectual-Principle and Intellectual-Principle upon the Good, all is linked to the Supreme by intermediaries, some close, some nearing those of the closer attachment, while the order of sense stands remotest, dependent upon soul.
EIGHTH TRACTATE.
ON FREE-WILL AND THE WILL OF THE ONE.
1.Can there be question as to whether the gods have voluntary action? Or are we to take it that, while we may well enquire in the case of men with their combination of powerlessness and hesitating power, the gods must be declared omnipotent, not merely some things but all lying at their nod? Or is power entire, freedom of action in all things, to be reserved to one alone, of the rest some being powerful, others powerless, others again a blend of power and impotence?
All this must come to the test: we must dare it even of the Firsts and of the All-Transcendent and, if we find omnipotence possible, work out how far freedom extends.The very notion of power must be scrutinized lest in this ascription we be really making power identical with Essential Act, and even with Act not yet achieved.
But for the moment we may pass over these questions to deal with the traditional problem of freedom of action in ourselves.
To begin with, what must be intended when we assert that something is in our power; what is the conception here?
To establish this will help to show whether we are to ascribe freedom to the gods and still more to God, or to refuse it, or again, while asserting it, to question still, in regard both to the higher and lower- the mode of its presence.
What then do we mean when we speak of freedom in ourselves and why do we question it?
My own reading is that, moving as we do amid adverse fortunes, compulsions, violent assaults of passion crushing the soul, feeling ourselves mastered by these experiences, playing slave to them, going where they lead, we have been brought by all this to doubt whether we are anything at all and dispose of ourselves in any particular.
