(95) "The third Principle of this world is generated and created out of the first, that is, magically: As is clearly demonstrated in our second [Three Principles], and in our third book [Threefold Life], unto which this book is only an introduction, and is the first book, which was not sufficiently apprehended by the author at the first time, though it appeared clearly enough, yet all of it could not be conceived; also it was as when a torrent or stormy shower of rain passeth over a place, from whence vegetation and springing existeth; for therein is the seed of the whole Deity."]

(100) ["The soul containeth the first principle; and the soul's spirit the second principle in Ternario sancto, in the holy Ternary; and the outward spirit, viz. the astral, containeth the third Principle of this world."]

(2) Therefore we must affirm no more than these three Primals: we are not to introduce superfluous distinctions which their nature rejects. We are to proclaim one Intellectual-Principle unchangeably the same, in no way subject to decline, acting in imitation, as true as its nature allows, of the Father.

And as to our own Soul we are to hold that it stands, in part, always in the presence of The Divine Beings, while in part it is concerned with the things of this sphere and in part occupies a middle ground. It is one nature in graded powers; and sometimes the Soul in its entirety is borne along by the loftiest in itself and in the Authentic Existent; sometimes, the less noble part is dragged down and drags the mid-soul with it, though the law is that the Soul may never succumb entire.

The Soul's disaster falls upon it when it ceases to dwell in the perfect Beauty- the appropriate dwelling-place of that Soul which is no part and of which we too are no part- thence to pour forth into the frame of the All whatsoever the All can hold of good and beauty. There that Soul rests, free from all solicitude, not ruling by plan or policy, not redressing, but establishing order by the marvellous efficacy of its contemplation of the things above it.

For the measure of its absorption in that vision is the measure of its grace and power, and what it draws from this contemplation it communicates to the lower sphere, illuminated and illuminating always.

(11) I think, therefore, that those ancient sages, who sought to secure the presence of divine beings by the erection of shrines and statues, showed insight into the nature of the All; they perceived that, though this Soul is everywhere tractable, its presence will be secured all the more readily when an appropriate receptacle is elaborated, a place especially capable of receiving some portion or phase of it, something reproducing it, or representing it, and serving like a mirror to catch an image of it.

It belongs to the nature of the All to make its entire content reproduce, most felicitously, the Reason-Principles in which it participates; every particular thing is the image within matter of a Reason-Principle which itself images a pre-material Reason-Principle: thus every particular entity is linked to that Divine Being in whose likeness it is made, the divine principle which the soul contemplated and contained in the act of each creation. Such mediation and representation there must have been since it was equally impossible for the created to be without share in the Supreme, and for the Supreme to descend into the created.

The Intellectual-Principle in the Supreme has ever been the sun of that sphere- let us accept that as the type of the creative Logos- and immediately upon it follows the Soul depending from it, stationary Soul from stationary Intelligence. But the Soul borders also upon the sun of this sphere, and it becomes the medium by which all is linked to the overworld; it plays the part of an interpreter between what emanates from that sphere down to this lower universe, and what rises- as far as, through soul, anything can- from the lower to the highest.

Nothing, in fact, is far away from anything; things are not remote: there is, no doubt, the aloofness of difference and of mingled natures as against the unmingled; but selfhood has nothing to do with spatial position, and in unity itself there may still be distinction.

These Beings are divine in virtue of cleaving to the Supreme, because, by the medium of the Soul thought of as descending they remain linked with the Primal Soul, and through it are veritably what they are called and possess the vision of the Intellectual Principle, the single object of contemplation to that soul in which they have their being.

(7) Certain Principles, then, we may take to be established- some self-evident, others brought out by our treatment above:

All the forms of Authentic Existence spring from vision and are a vision. Everything that springs from these Authentic Existences in their vision is an object of vision-manifest to sensation or to true knowledge or to surface-awareness. All act aims at this knowing; all impulse is towards knowledge, all that springs from vision exists to produce Ideal-Form, that is a fresh object of vision, so that universally, as images of their engendering principles, they all produce objects of vision, Ideal-forms. In the engendering of these sub-existences, imitations of the Authentic, it is made manifest that the creating powers operate not for the sake of creation and action but in order to produce an object of vision. This same vision is the ultimate purpose of all the acts of the mind and, even further downward, of all sensation, since sensation also is an effort towards knowledge; lower still, Nature, producing similarly its subsequent principle, brings into being the vision and Idea that we know in it. It is certain, also, that as the Firsts exist in vision all other things must be straining towards the same condition; the starting point is, universally, the goal.

When living things reproduce their Kind, it is that the Reason-Principles within stir them; the procreative act is the expression of a contemplation, a travail towards the creation of many forms, many objects of contemplation, so that the universe may be filled full with Reason-Principles and that contemplation may be, as nearly as possible, endless: to bring anything into being is to produce an Idea-Form and that again is to enrich the universe with contemplation: all the failures, alike in being and in doing, are but the swerving of visionaries from the object of vision: in the end the sorriest craftsman is still a maker of forms, ungracefully. So Love, too, is vision with the pursuit of Ideal-Form.

(78) This is a short entrance or introduction, shewing how one must consider the divine and the natural being. Henceforth I will describe the true ground and depth concerning what God is, and how all things are framed in God's being.

(13) But thou art to know this Mystery: that in the centre or midst of these three kingdoms is generated the splendour or Son of God. [14. "This needs explanation: Read the second (The Three Principles) and the third part (The Threefold Life) of these writings, where it is described more fundamentally: for nothing that is divisible, measurable or circumscriptive is here meant or understood, only it was in simplicity and plainness so set down at the first, because of the slow and dull apprehension."]

(84) ["It has in it the first Principle; the spirit of the soul has the second; and the astral or starry spirit in the elements has the third, viz. this world."]

(34) For ourselves, while whatever in us belongs to the body of the All should be yielded to its action, we ought to make sure that we submit only within limits, realizing that the entire man is not thus bound to it: intelligent servitors yield a part of themselves to their masters but in part retain their personality, and are thus less absolutely at beck and call, as not being slaves, not utterly chattels.

The changing configurations within the All could not fail to be produced as they are, since the moving bodies are not of equal speed.

Now the movement is guided by a Reason-Principle; the relations of the living whole are altered in consequence; here in our own realm all that happens reacts in sympathy to the events of that higher sphere: it becomes, therefore, advisable to ask whether we are to think of this realm as following upon the higher by agreement, or to attribute to the configurations the powers underlying the events, and whether such powers would be vested in the configurations simply or in the relations of the particular items.

It will be said that one position of one given thing has by no means an identical effect- whether of indication or of causation- in its relation to another and still less to any group of others, since each several being seems to have a natural tendency of its own.

The truth is that the configuration of any given group means merely the relationship of the several parts, and, changing the members, the relationship remains the same.

But, this being so, the power will belong, not to the positions but to the beings holding those positions?

To both taken together. For as things change their relations, and as any one thing changes place, there is a change of power.

But what power? That of causation or of indication?

To this double thing- the particular configuration of particular beings- there accrues often the twofold power, that of causation and that of indication, but sometimes only that of indication. Thus we are obliged to attribute powers both to the configuration and to the beings entering into them. In mime dancers each of the hands has its own power, and so with all the limbs; the relative positions have much power; and, for a third power, there is that of the accessories and concomitants; underlying the action of the performers' limbs, there are such items as the clutched fingers and the muscles and veins following suit.

(14) The Reason, then, is the Mind's image, and Mind God's [image]; while Body is [the image] of the Form; and Form [the image] of the Soul. The subtlest part of Matter is, then, Air ; of Air, Soul; of Soul, Mind; and of Mind, God. And God surroundeth all and permeateth all; while Mind Surroundeth Soul, Soul Air, Air Matter. Necessity and Providence and Nature are instruments of Cosmos and of Matter's ordering; while of intelligible things each is Essence, and Sameness is their Essence. But of the bodies of the Cosmos each is many; for through possessiong Sameness, [these] composed bodies, though they do change from one into another of themselves, do natheless keep the incorruption of their Sameness.

(4) To meet the difficulty we must make a close examination of the nature of Man in the Intellectual; perhaps, though, it is better to begin with the man of this plane lest we be reasoning to Man There from a misconception of Man here. There may even be some who deny the difference.

We ask first whether man as here is a Reason-Principle different to that soul which produces him as here and gives him life and thought; or is he that very soul or, again, the soul using the human body?

Now if man is a reasonable living being and by "living being" is meant a conjoint of soul and body, the Reason-Principle of man is not identical with soul. But if the conjoint of soul and body is the reason-principle of man, how can man be an eternal reality, seeing that it is only when soul and body have come together that the Reason-Principle so constituted appears?

The Reason-Principle will be the foreteller of the man to be, not the Man Absolute with which we are dealing but more like his definition, and not at that indicating his nature since what is indicated is not the Idea that is to enter Matter but only that of the known thing, the conjoint. We have not yet found the Man we are seeking, the equivalent of the Reason-Principle.

But- it may be said- the Reason-Principle of such beings must be some conjoint, one element in another.

This does not define the principle of either. If we are to state with entire accuracy the Reason-Principles of the Forms in Matter and associated with Matter, we cannot pass over the generative Reason-Principle, in this case that of Man, especially since we hold that a complete definition must cover the essential manner of being.

What, then, is this essential of Man? What is the indwelling, inseparable something which constitutes Man as here? Is the Reason-Principle itself a reasoning living being or merely a maker of that reasoning life-form? and what is it apart from that act of making?

The living being corresponds to a reasoning life in the Reason-Principle; man therefore is a reasoning life: but there is no life without soul; either, then, the soul supplies the reasoning life- and man therefore is not an essence but simply an activity of the soul- or the soul is the man.

But if reasoning soul is the man, why does it not constitute man upon its entry into some other animal form?

(6) But how and what does the Intellectual-Principle see and, especially, how has it sprung from that which is to become the object of its vision?

The mind demands the existence of these Beings, but it is still in trouble over the problem endlessly debated by the most ancient philosophers: from such a unity as we have declared The One to be, how does anything at all come into substantial existence, any multiplicity, dyad, or number? Why has the Primal not remained self-gathered so that there be none of this profusion of the manifold which we observe in existence and yet are compelled to trace to that absolute unity?

In venturing an answer, we first invoke God Himself, not in loud word but in that way of prayer which is always within our power, leaning in soul towards Him by aspiration, alone towards the alone. But if we seek the vision of that great Being within the Inner Sanctuary- self-gathered, tranquilly remote above all else- we begin by considering the images stationed at the outer precincts, or, more exactly to the moment, the first image that appears. How the Divine Mind comes into being must be explained:

Everything moving has necessarily an object towards which it advances; but since the Supreme can have no such object, we may not ascribe motion to it: anything that comes into being after it can be produced only as a consequence of its unfailing self-intention; and, of course, we dare not talk of generation in time, dealing as we are with eternal Beings: where we speak of origin in such reference, it is in the sense, merely, of cause and subordination: origin from the Supreme must not be taken to imply any movement in it: that would make the Being resulting from the movement not a second principle but a third: the Movement would be the second hypostasis.

Given this immobility in the Supreme, it can neither have yielded assent nor uttered decree nor stirred in any way towards the existence of a secondary.

What happened then? What are we to conceive as rising in the neighbourhood of that immobility?

It must be a circumradiation- produced from the Supreme but from the Supreme unaltering- and may be compared to the brilliant light encircling the sun and ceaselessly generated from that unchanging substance.

All existences, as long as they retain their character, produce- about themselves, from their essence, in virtue of the power which must be in them- some necessary, outward-facing hypostasis continuously attached to them and representing in image the engendering archetypes: thus fire gives out its heat; snow is cold not merely to itself; fragrant substances are a notable instance; for, as long as they last, something is diffused from them and perceived wherever they are present.

Again, all that is fully achieved engenders: therefore the eternally achieved engenders eternally an eternal being. At the same time, the offspring is always minor: what then are we to think of the All-Perfect but that it can produce nothing less than the very greatest that is later than itself. The greatest, later than the divine unity, must be the Divine Mind, and it must be the second of all existence, for it is that which sees The One on which alone it leans while the First has no need whatever of it. The offspring of the prior to Divine Mind can be no other than that Mind itself and thus is the loftiest being in the universe, all else following upon it- the soul, for example, being an utterance and act of the Intellectual-Principle as that is an utterance and act of The One. But in soul the utterance is obscured, for soul is an image and must look to its own original: that Principle, on the contrary, looks to the First without mediation- thus becoming what it is- and has that vision not as from a distance but as the immediate next with nothing intervening, close to the One as Soul to it.

The offspring must seek and love the begetter; and especially so when begetter and begotten are alone in their sphere; when, in addition, the begetter is the highest good, the offspring is attached by a bond of sheer necessity, separated only in being distinct.

(10) Still, do not, I urge you, look for The Good through any of these other things; if you do, you will see not itself but its trace: you must form the idea of that which is to be grasped cleanly standing to itself not in any combination, the unheld in which all have hold: for no other is such, yet one such there must be.

Now it is clear that we cannot possess ourselves of the power of this principle in its concentrated fulness: so to do one must be identical with it: but some partial attainment is within our reach.

You who make the venture will throw forward all your being but you will never tell it entire- for that, you must yourself be the divine Intellect in Act- and at your utmost success it will still pass from you or, rather, you from it. In ordinary vision you may think to see the object entire: in this intellective act, all, less or more, that you can take to mind you may set down as The Good.

It is The Good since, being a power , it is the cause of the intelligent and intellective life as of life and intellect: for these grow from it as from the source of essence and of existence, the Source as being One, simplex and first because before it was nothing. All derives from this: it is the origin of the primal movement which it does not possess and of the repose which is but its absence of need; for neither rest nor movement can belong to that which has no place in which either could occur; centre, object, ground, all are alike unknown to it, for it is before all. Yet its Being is not limited; what is there to set bounds to it? Nor, on the other hand, is it infinite in the sense of magnitude; what place can there be to which it must extend, or why should there be movement where there is no lacking? All its infinitude resides in its power: it does not change and will not fail; and in it all that is unfailing finds duration.

(28) But here thou must elevate thy mind in the spirit, and consider how the whole nature, with all the powers which are in nature, also the wideness, depth and height, also heaven and earth, and all whatsoever is therein, and all that is above the heavens, is together the body or corporeity of God; and the powers of the stars are the fountain veins in the natural body of God in this world.

(2) There is always an action and reaction; an advance and a retreat; a rising and a sinking; manifested in all of the airs and phenomena of the Universe. Suns, worlds, men, animals, plants, minerals, forces, energy, mind and matter, yes, even Spirit, manifests this Principle. The Principle manifests in the creation and destruction of worlds; in the rise and fall of nations; in the life history of all things; and finally in the mental states of Man.

(11) Since there is a Soul which reasons upon the right and good- for reasoning is an enquiry into the rightness and goodness of this rather than that- there must exist some permanent Right, the source and foundation of this reasoning in our soul; how, else, could any such discussion be held? Further, since the soul's attention to these matters is intermittent, there must be within us an Intellectual-Principle acquainted with that Right not by momentary act but in permanent possession. Similarly there must be also the principle of this principle, its cause, God. This Highest cannot be divided and allotted, must remain intangible but not bound to space, it may be present at many points, wheresoever there is anything capable of accepting one of its manifestations; thus a centre is an independent unity; everything within the circle has its term at the centre; and to the centre the radii bring each their own. Within our nature is such a centre by which we grasp and are linked and held; and those of us are firmly in the Supreme whose collective tendency is There.

(7) Here I must lay hold on the whole divine body in the midst or centre at the heart, and explain the whole body, how nature is or existeth, and there you will see the highest ground, how all the seven spirits of God continually generate one another, and how the Deity has neither beginning nor end.

(16) But even there we are not to remain always, in that beauty of the multiple; we must make haste yet higher, above this heaven of ours and even that; leaving all else aside we ask in awe "Who produced that realm and how?" Everything There is a single Idea in an individual impression and, informed by The Good, possesses the universal good transcendent over all. Each possessing that Being above, possesses also the total Living-Form in virtue of that transcendent life, possesses, no doubt, much else as well.

But what is the Nature of this Transcendent in view of which and by way of which the Ideas are good?

The best way of putting the question is to ask whether, when Intellectual-Principle looked towards The Good, it had Intellection of that unity as a multiplicity and, itself a unity, plied its Act by breaking into parts what it was too feeble to know as a whole.

No: that would not be Intellection looking upon the Good; it would be a looking void of Intellection. We must think of it not as looking but as living; dependent upon That, it kept itself turned Thither; all the tendance taking place There and upon That must be a movement teeming with life and must so fill the looking Principle; there is no longer bare Act, there is a filling to saturation. Forthwith Intellectual-Principle becomes all things, knows that fact in virtue of its self-knowing and at once becomes Intellectual-Principle, filled so as to hold within itself that object of its vision, seeing all by the light from the Giver and bearing that Giver with it.

In this way the Supreme may be understood to be the cause at once of essential reality and of the knowing of reality. The sun, cause of the existence of sense-things and of their being seen, is indirectly the cause of sight, without being either the faculty or the object: similarly this Principle, The Good, cause of Being and Intellectual-Principle, is a light appropriate to what is to be seen There and to their seer; neither the Beings nor the Intellectual-Principle, it is their source and by the light it sheds upon both makes them objects of Intellection. This filling procures the existence; after the filling, the being; the existence achieved, the seeing followed: the beginning is that state of not yet having been filled, though there is, also, the beginning which means that the Filling Principle was outside and by that act of filling gave shape to the filled.

(6) We take it, then, that the Intellectual-Principle is the authentic existences and contains them all- not as in a place but as possessing itself and being one thing with this its content. All are one there and yet are distinct: similarly the mind holds many branches and items of knowledge simultaneously, yet none of them merged into any other, each acting its own part at call quite independently, every conception coming out from the inner total and working singly. It is after this way, though in a closer unity, that the Intellectual-Principle is all Being in one total- and yet not in one, since each of these beings is a distinct power which, however, the total Intellectual-Principle includes as the species in a genus, as the parts in a whole. This relation may be illustrated by the powers in seed; all lies undistinguished in the unit, the formative ideas gathered as in one kernel; yet in that unit there is eye-principle, and there is hand-principle, each of which is revealed as a separate power by its distinct material product. Thus each of the powers in the seed is a Reason-Principle one and complete yet including all the parts over which it presides: there will be something bodily, the liquid, for example, carrying mere Matter; but the principle itself is Idea and nothing else, idea identical with the generative idea belonging to the lower soul, image of a higher. This power is sometimes designated as Nature in the seed-life; its origin is in the divine; and, outgoing from its priors as light from fire, it converts and shapes the matter of things, not by push and pull and the lever work of which we hear so much, but by bestowal of the Ideas.

(93) "Thus the Reader is to understand this book as concerning three Principles or births; viz. one is the original of the eternal nature, in the eternal will or desire of God, which desire driveth itself on in great anguish till it cometh to the fourth form, viz. to the fire.