God is the intelligent cause of the world, man is the intelligent perceiver of the world.
There being, therefore, a distinction between intelligence as principle or cause, and intelligence as perception, one may easily conceive how the Word in the infinite may be possessed of intelligence, without being the principle of intelligence.
The Word, who is one Godhead with the first person, a distinct person himself, is also the substantial image of the first person. Because, in force of the act by which he is uttered, which is essentially assimilative, he is produced as the likeness of him whose expression and utterance he is; and as he is one as to substance with the conceiver, he is, consequently, his substantial image and likeness. We conclude, therefore, that the production of the second person in the infinite—resulting in a person, the substantial image of the conceiver, in force of the act of intelligencing by which he is produced, which is essentially assimilative—is governed by the law of generation; and that, consequently, the first person in the infinite is Father, and the second, Son. "Thou art my Son, to-day I have begotten thee." [Footnote 291]
[Footnote 291: Ps. ii. 7.]
The law by which the third person in the infinite is produced, is different from that which governs the production of the second.
The latter takes place according to the law of generation or assimilation; the former is subject to the law of aspiration, which must be understood as follows.
By his Word, the intelligent activity apprehends and conceives his infinite perfection and goodness. For the Word, as we have seen, is nothing but the infinite and most perfect expression or image of the intelligent activity, and as the intelligent activity is infinite perfection and excellence, so the Word is the utterance, the intellectual reproduction of that excellence and goodness. Hence the intelligent activity, by his Word, conceives and utters himself as infinite perception and excellence. But perfection or goodness apprehended is necessarily loved. For goodness, once apprehended, awakens the will, and necessarily inclines it toward itself; it necessarily attracts and affects it. The intelligent activity, therefore by apprehending himself through his Word as infinite perfection and goodness, necessarily loves himself.
Love implies the insidence or indwelling of the object loved in the subject loving. The intelligent activity, therefore, who necessarily loves himself through his Word, must be as object loved in himself as subject loving.
This love as object must be co-eternal with the infinite, because by the law of immanence which governs the genesis of infinite life, every origination in the infinite must be co-eternal with the infinite.