/lit/ - Literature

>>16518648
>>16518656
>>16518660
§5.6.4. Further, if the Good is simple and must lack nothing, it would
have no need for thinking. But that which it does not need will not be
present to it. And since, generally, nothing is present to it, therefore,
thinking is not present to it. And it thinks nothing because there is
nothing other than it to think. Further, Intellect is other than the 5
Good, and it is Good-like by thinking the Good. Further, as in
a duality there is a one and another one, and it is not possible for this
one which is with another to be the number one, but rather the number
one in itself must be prior to that one which is with another, so it must be
in the case of something that has simplicity in it which is with another
thing that has simplicity in it. There must be something that is simple in
itself, not having in itself anything which is found in things that are 10
joined with other things. For how can it be that there is one thing in
another if that thing did not come from something that existed
separately beforehand? What is simple could not arise from some-
thing else – but what is many, or even just two, must itself depend on
something else.
And so, one should compare the first principle to light, the second to
15 the sun, and the third to the heavenly body of the moon to which light
is provided by the sun. For Soul has Intellect added to it, which colours
it when it is intellectual, whereas Intellect has what belongs to itself, not
being only light, but something illuminated in its own substantiality
while that which provides the light to Intellect is not something else, but
20 simply light, providing to Intellect the power to be what it is. What,
then, would it be in need of? For it is not identical with that which is in
another thing. For what is in another thing is other than that which is
what it is due to itself.

>>14937810
read corpus hermeticum book 5