Book 3 The Knowing Hypostases and the Transcendent 1. Are we to think that a being knowing itself must contain diversity, that self-knowledge can be affirmed only when someone phase of the self perceives other phases, and that therefore an absolutely simplex entity would be equally incapable of introversion and of self-awareness? No: a being that has no parts or

10. This matter need not be elaborated at present: it suffices to say that if the created were all, these ultimates [the higher] need not exist: but the Supreme does include primal, the primal because the producers. In other words, there must be, with the made, the making source; and, unless these are to be identical, there will be need

Book 4 How The Secondary Rise From The First: And On The One 1. Anything existing after The First must necessarily arise from that First, whether immediately or as tracing back to it through intervenients; there must be an order of secondary and tertiaries, in which any second is to be referred to The First, any third to the second.

Book 5 That the Intellectual Beings Are Not Outside the Intellectual-Principle: and On the Nature of the Good 1. The Intellectual-Principle, the veritably and essentially intellective, can this be conceived as ever falling into error, ever failing to think reality? Assuredly no: it would no longer be intelligent and therefore no longer Intellectual-Principle: it must know unceasingly — and never

Book 6 That the Principle Transcending Being Has No Intellectual Act. What Being Has Intellection Primary and What Being Has It Secondarily 1. There is a principle having intellection of the external and another having self-intellection and thus further removed from duality. Even the first mentioned is not without an effort towards the pure unity of which it is not

Book 7 Is There an Ideal Archetype of Particular Beings? 1. We have to examine the question whether there exists an ideal archetype of individuals, in other words whether I and every other human being go back to the Intellectual, every [living] thing having origin and principle There. If Socrates, Socrates’ soul, is external then the Authentic Socrates — to

Book 8 On The Intellectual Beauty 1. It is a principle with us that one who has attained to the vision of the Intellectual Beauty and grasped the beauty of the Authentic Intellect will be able also to come to understand the Father and Transcendent of that Divine Being. It concerns us, then, to try to see and say, for

Book 9 The Intellectual-Principle, the Ideas, and the Authentic Existence 1. All human beings from birth onward live to the realm of sense more than to the Intellectual. Forced of necessity to attend first to the material, some of them elect to abide by that order and, their life throughout, make its concerns their first and their last; the sweet

Book 1 On the Kinds of Being (1) 1. Philosophy at a very early stage investigated the number and character of the Existents. Various theories resulted: some declared for one Existent, others for a finite number, others again for an infinite number, while as regards the nature of the Existents — one, numerically finite, or numerically infinite — there was