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 forget; and its knowledge can be no guesswork, no hesitating assent, no acceptance of an alien report. Nor can it call on demonstration or, we are told it may at times act by this or, I method, at least there must be something patent to it in virtue of its own nature. In actual fact reason tells us that all its knowledge is thus inherent to it, for there is no means by which to distinguish between the spontaneous knowledge and the other. But, in any case, some knowledge, it is conceded, is inherent to it. Whence are we to understand the certainty of this knowledge to come to it or how do its objects carry the conviction of their reality? Consider sense-knowledge: its objects seem most patently certified, yet the doubt returns whether the apparent reality may not lie in the states of the percipient rather than in the material before him; the decision demands intelligence or reasoning. Besides, even granting that what the senses grasp is really contained in the objects, none the less what is thus known by the senses is an image: sense can never grasp the thing itself; this remains for ever outside. Now, if the Intellectual-Principle in its act- that is in knowing the intellectual- is to know these its objects as alien, we have to explain how it makes contact with them: obviously it might never come upon them, and so might never know them; or it might know them only upon the meeting: its knowing, at that, would not be an enduring condition. If we are told that the Intellectual-Principle and the Intellectual Objects are linked in a standing unity, we demand the description of this unity. Next, the intellections would be impressions, that is to say not native act but violence from without: now how is such impressing possible and what shape could the impressions bear? Intellection, again, becomes at this a mere handling of the external, exactly like sense-perception. What then distinguishes it unless that it deals with objects of less extension? And what certitude can it have that its knowledge is true? Or what enables it to pronounce that the object is good, beautiful, or just, when each of these ideas is to stand apart from itself? The very principles of judgement, by which it must be guided, would be excluded: with objects and canons alike outside it, so is truth. Again; either the objects of the Intellectual-Principle are senseless and devoid of life and intellect or they are in possession of Intellect. Now, if they are in possession of Intellect, that realm is a union of both and is Truth. This combined Intellectual realm will be the Primal Intellect: we have only then to examine how this reality, conjoint of Intellectual-Principle and its object, is to be understood, whether as combining self-united identity with yet duality and difference, or what other relation holds between them. If on the contrary the objects of Intellectual-Principle are without intelligence and life, what are they? They cannot be premises, axioms or predicates: as predicates they would not have real existence; they would be affirmations linking separate entities, as when we affirm that justice is good though justice and good are distinct realities. If we are told that they are self-standing entities- the distinct beings Justice and Good- then the Intellectual Realm will not be a unity nor be included in any unity: all is sundered individuality. Where, then, are they and what spatial distinction keeps them apart? How does the Intellectual-Principle come to meet with them as it travels round; what keeps each true to its character; what gives them enduring identity; what conceivable shape or character can they have? They are being presented to us as some collection of figures, in gold or some other material substance, the work of some unknown sculptor or graver: but at once the Intellectual-Principle which contemplates them becomes sense-perception; and there still remains the question how one of them comes to be Justice and another something else. But the great argument is that if we are to allow that these objects of Intellection are in the strict sense outside the Intellectual-Principle, which, therefore, must see them as external, then inevitably it cannot possess the truth of them. In all it looks upon, it sees falsely; for those objects must be the authentic things; yet it looks upon them without containing them and in such knowledge holds only their images; that is to say, not containing the authentic, adopting phantasms of the true, it holds the false; it never possesses reality. If it knows that it possesses the false, it must confess itself excluded from the truth; if it fails of this knowledge also, imagining itself to possess the truth which has eluded it, then the doubled falsity puts it the deeper into error. It is thus, I suppose, that in sense-perception we have belief instead of truth; belief is our lief; we satisfy ourselves with something very different from the original which is the occasion of perception. In fine, there would be on the hypothesis no truth in the Intellectual-Principle. But such an Intellectual-Principle would not be truth, nor truly an Intellectual-Principle. There would be no Intellectual-Principle at all : yet elsewhere truth cannot be.

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

As, then, Knowledge (episthmh) is an intellectual state, from which results the act of knowing, and becomes apprehension irrefragable by reason; so...

And the knowledge pre-existing of each object of investigation is sometimes merely of the essence, while its functions are unknown (as of stones, and ...

Now, if anyone wants to believe the words set down (here), let him go from what is hidden to the end of what is visible, and this Thought will instruc...

Certainly. Do we admit the existence of opinion? Undoubtedly. As being the same with knowledge, or another faculty? Another faculty. Then opinion and ...

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...

"Ask," He says, "and I will do it; think, and I will give." For, in fine, it is impossible that the immutable should assume firmness and consistency...

And it is requisite, that it should not first investigate the principles of itself, but the common principles of all beings. For wisdom so subsists wi...

Let us now pass on to a consideration of the operation of the Principle on the Mental Plane. Many interesting features are there awaiting examination.

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...

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...

Those Natures are both Intellectual and Intelligible, which, themselves possessing Intellection, are the objects of Intelligence to others.

He is wide awake. And may we not say that the mind of the one who knows has knowledge, and that the mind of the other, who opines only, has opinion? C...

And the habit which is concerned with geometry and the cognate sciences I suppose that you would term understanding and not reason, as being intermedi...

Unsound intellection is false understanding, not resting on a perception of the true nature of things.

In point of fact, the philosophers admit that the first principles of all things are indemonstrable. So that if there is demonstration at all, there...

True. Of not-being, ignorance was assumed to be the necessary correlative; of being, knowledge? True, he said. Then opinion is not concerned either wi...

Of things stated, some are stated without connection; as, for example, "man" and "runs," and whatever does not complete a sentence, which is either...

The first of the Seven Hermetic Principles is the Principle of Mentalism, the axiom of which is "THE ALL is Mind; the Universe is Mental," which...

It is not proper to understand that Intelligible One with vehemence, but with the extended flame of far reaching Mind, measuring all things except...