Select Works, Section 157 (part 1)

Section 1 1. We have seen elsewhere that the Good, the Principle, is simplex, and, correspondingly, primal- for the secondary can never be simplex- that it contains nothing: that it is an integral Unity. Now the same Nature belongs to the Principle we know as The One. just as the goodness of The Good is essential and not the outgrowth of some prior substance so the Unity of The One is its essential. Therefore: When we speak of The One and when we speak of The Good we must recognize an Identical Nature; we must affirm that they are the same- not, it is true, as venturing any predication with regard to that [unknowable] Hypostasis but simply as indicating it to ourselves in the best terms we find. Even in calling it "The First" we mean no more than to express that it is the most absolutely simplex: it is the Self-Sufficing only in the sense that it is not of that compound nature which would make it dependent upon any constituent; it is "the Self-Contained" because everything contained in something alien must also exist by that alien. Deriving, then, from nothing alien, entering into nothing alien, in no way a made-up thing, there can be nothing above it. We need not, then, go seeking any other Principles; this- the One and the Good- is our First; next to it follows the Intellectual Principle, the Primal Thinker; and upon this follows Soul. Such is the order in nature. The Intellectual Realm allows no more than these and no fewer. Those who hold to fewer Principles must hold the identity of either Intellectual-Principle and Soul or of Intellectual-Principle and The First; but we have abundantly shown that these are distinct. It remains for us to consider whether there are more than these Three. Now what other [Divine] Kinds could there be? No Principles of the universe could be found at once simpler and more transcendent than this whose existence we have affirmed and described. They will scarcely urge upon us the doubling of the Principle in Act by a Principle in Potentiality. It is absurd to seek such a plurality by distinguishing between potentiality and actuality in the case of immaterial beings whose existence is in Act- even in lower forms no such division can be made and we cannot conceive a duality in the Intellectual-Principle, one phase in some vague calm, another all astir. Under what form can we think of repose in the Intellectual Principle as contrasted with its movement or utterance? What would the quiescence of the one phase be as against the energy of the others? No: the Intellectual-Principle is continuously itself, unchangeably constituted in stable Act. With movement- towards it or within it- we are in the realm of the Soul's operation: such act is a Reason-Principle emanating from it and entering into Soul, thus made an Intellectual Soul, but in no sense creating an intermediate Principle to stand between the two. Nor are we warranted in affirming a plurality of Intellectual Principles on the ground that there is one that knows and thinks and another knowing that it knows and thinks. For whatever distinction be possible in the Divine between its Intellectual Act and its Consciousness of that Act, still all must be one projection not unaware of its own operation: it would be absurd to imagine any such unconsciousness in the Authentic Intelligence; the knowing principle must be one and the selfsame with that which knows of the knowing. The contrary supposition would give us two beings, one that merely knows, and another separate being that knows of the act of knowing.