The Intelligence that deserves to be called the purest intelligence, therefore, cannot have been born from any source, other than the first Principle. It must, from its birth, have begotten all beings, all the beauty of ideas, all the intelligible deities; for it is full of the things it has begotten; it devours them in the sense that it itself retains all of them, that it does not allow them to fall into matter, nor be born of Rhea.[240] That is the meaning of the mysteries and myths; "Saturn, the wisest of the divinities, was born before Jupiter, and devoured his children." Here Saturn represents intelligence, big with its conceptions, and perfectly pure.[241] They add, "Jupiter, as soon as he was grown, in his turn begat." As soon as Intelligence is perfect, it begets the Soul, by the mere fact of its being perfect, and because so great a power cannot remain sterile. Here again the begotten being had to be inferior to its principle, had to represent its image, had, by itself, to be indeterminate, and had later to be determined and formed by the principle that begat it. What Intelligence begets is a reason, a hypostatic form of existence whose nature it is to reason. The latter moves around Intelligence; is the light that surrounds it, the ray that springs from it. On the one hand it is bound to Intelligence, fills itself with it; enjoys it, participates in it, deriving its intellectual operations from it. On the other hand, it is in contact with inferior things, or rather, begets them. Being thus begotten by the Soul, these things are necessarily less good than the Soul, as we shall further explain. The sphere of divine things ends with the Soul.
PLATO TEACHES THREE SPHERES OF EXISTENCE.[242]
8. This is how Plato establishes three degrees in the hierarchy of being[243]: "Everything is around the king of all." He is here speaking of first rank entities. He adds, "What is of the second order is around the second principle; and what is of the third order is around the third principle." Plato[244] further says that "God is the father of the cause." By cause, he means Intelligence; for, in the system of Plato, it is Intelligence which plays the part of demiurgic creator. Plato adds that it is this power that forms the Soul in the cup.[245] As the cause is intelligence, Plato applies the name of father to the absolute Good, the principle superior to Intelligence and superior to "Being." In several passages he calls the Idea "existence and intelligence." He therefore really teaches that Intelligence is begotten from the Good, and the Soul from Intelligence. This teaching, indeed, is not new; it has been taught from the most ancient times, but without being brought out in technical terms. We claim to be no more than the interpreters of the earlier philosophers, and to show by the very testimony of Plato that they held the same views as we do.
THIS DOCTRINE TAUGHT BY PARMENIDES.
The first philosopher who taught this was Parmenides, who identified Existence and Intelligence, and who does not place existence among sense-objects, "for, thought is the same thing as existence."[246] He adds[247] that existence is immovable, although being thought. Parmenides thus denies all corporeal movement in existence, so as that it might always remain the same. Further, Parmenides[248] compares existence to a sphere, because it contains everything, drawing thought not from without, but from within itself. When Parmenides, in his writings, mentions the One, he means the cause, as if he recognized that this unity (of the intelligible being) implied manifoldness. In the dialogue of Plato he speaks with greater accuracy, and distinguishes three principles: the First, the absolute One; the second, the manifold one; the third, the one and the manifold. He therefore, as we do, reaches three natures.
ANAXAGORAS TEACHES THE SAME THING.
9. Anaxagoras, who teaches a pure and unmingled Intelligence[249] also insists that the first Principle is simple, and that the One is separated from sense-objects. But, as he lived in times too ancient, he has not treated this matter in sufficient detail.
HERACLITUS ALSO TAUGHT THE SAME THING.
Heraclitus also taught the eternal and intelligible One; for Heraclitus holds that bodies are ceaselessly "becoming" (that is, developing), and that they are in a perpetual state of flux.[250]