If the Intellectual-Principle were the engendering Source, then the engendered secondary, while less perfect than the Intellectual-Principle, would be close to it and similar to it: but since the engendering Source is above the Intellectual-Principle, the secondary can only be that principle. But why is the Intellectual-Principle not the generating source? Because : the Act of the Intellectual-Principle is intellection, which means that, seeing the intellectual object towards which it has turned, it is consummated, so to speak, by that object, being in itself indeterminate like sight and determined by the intellectual object. This is why it has been said that "out of the indeterminate dyad and The One arise the Ideas and the numbers": for the dyad is the Intellectual-Principle. Thus it is not a simplex; it is manifold; it exhibits a certain composite quality- within the Intellectual or divine order, of course- as the principle that sees the manifold. It is, further, itself simultaneously object and agent of intellection and is on that count also a duality: and it possesses besides another object of intellection in the Order following upon itself. But how can the Intellectual-Principle be a product of the Intellectual Object? In this way: the intellectual object is self-gathered and is not deficient as the seeing and knowing principle must be- deficient, mean, as needing an object- it is therefore no unconscious thing: all its content and accompaniment are its possession; it is self-distinguishing throughout; it is the seat of life as of all things; it is, itself, that self-intellection which takes place in eternal repose, that is to say, in a mode other than that of the Intellectual-Principle. But if something comes to being within an entity which in no way looks outside itself- and especially within a being which is the sum of being- that entity must be the source of the new thing: stable in its own identity, it produces; but the product is that of an unchanged being: the producer is unchangeably the intellectual object, the product is produced as the Intellectual Act, an Act taking intellection of its source- the only object that exists for it- and so becoming Intellectual-Principle, that is to say, becoming another intellectual being, resembling its source, a reproduction and image of that. But how from amid perfect rest can an Act arise? There is in everything the Act of the Essence and the Act going out from the Essence: the first Act is the thing itself in its realized identity, the second Act is an inevitably following outgo from the first, an emanation distinct from the thing itself. Thus even in fire there is the warmth comported by its essential nature and there is the warmth going instantaneously outward from that characterizing heat by the fact that the fire, remaining unchangeably fire, utters the Act native to its essential reality. So it is in the divine also: or rather we have there the earlier form of the double act: the divine remains in its own unchanging being, but from its perfection and from the Act included in its nature there emanates the secondary or issuing Act which- as the output of a mighty power, the mightiest there is- attains to Real Being as second to that which stands above all Being. That transcendent was the potentiality of the All; this secondary is the All made actual. And if this is all things, that must be above and outside of all, so, must transcend real being. And again, if that secondary is all things, and if above its multiplicity there is a unity not ranking among those things, once more this unity transcends Real Being and therefore transcends the Intellectual-Principle as well. There is thus something transcending Intellectual-Principle, for we must remember that real being is no corpse, the negation of life and of intellection, but is in fact identical with the Intellectual-Principle. The Intellectual-Principle is not something taking cognisance of things as sensation deals with sense objects existing independently of sense: on the contrary, it actually is the things it knows: the ideas constituting them it has not borrowed: whence could it have taken them? No: it exists here together with the things of the universe, identical with them, making a unity with them; and the collective knowledge of the immaterial is the universe of things.

Now if you consider what preserves all thus, and whence it is, then you find the eternal Birth that has no Beginning, and you find the Original of the...

Some confusion has arisen in the minds of persons considering this Principle, from the fact that they were unable to explain how one thing could...

Hereupon you are to know, that the Matrix in the second Principle (which yet has its Original and eternal Root in the first Principle) is but merely...

In this Consideration you may find what I understand by a Principle. For a Principle is nothing else but a new Birth, a new Life: Besides, there is...

For Intellect existeth not without the Intelligible; apart from it, it subsisteth not.

The cause of things is predicated in a threefold manner. One, What the cause is, as the statuary; a second, Of what it is the cause of becoming, a...

For every Creature looks but into its Mother that is fixed [or predominant] in it. The material Creature sees a material Substance, but an immaterial ...

And this third Principle is the second's proper own, not separate, but one Essence in it, [and with it,] all over, and yet there is a Birth between th...

He finds that there exists a mental Something which is able to Will that the "Me" act along certain creative lines, and which is also able to stand as...

Now we have shown you the first Principle, out of which all Things take their Beginning; and must so speak of it, as if there was a Place, or a...

Leaving, therefore, these particulars, you wish in the next place that I would unfold to you “ What the Egyptians conceive the first cause to be;...

It is necessary, therefore, to admit a thing of this kind in partial souls. For such as is the life which the soul received, prior to its insertion...

But that the Soul of Christ could be generated both in the new, and also in the old earthly Creature, it is because the Gate of the Soul in the first ...

The eternal Generating is an unbeginning Birth, and it has neither Number nor End, and its Depth is bottomless, and the Band of Life incorruptible:...

The deep Gate of Life.

Thus now we may know, that God is All in All, and fills All, as it is written; Am not I he thatfilleth all Things? And therefore we know, that the...

Thus now if we will speak of the third Principle, viz. of the Beginning and Birth of this World, then we must consider the Root of the Genetrix,...

For through him ( the Delimiter ) knowledge of it ( the Invisible Spirit ) became available, since he ( the Delimiter ) is the one who knows what it (...

The Mind of the Father whirled forth in reechoing roar, comprehending by invincible Will Ideas omniform ; which flying forth from that one fountain...

For there is no strict likeness, between the caused and the causes. The caused indeed possess the accepted likenesses of the causes, but the causes th...