Cause Principle Unity

Cause, principle and unity
things what our intellect is to the production of the representations of
things. The Pythagoreans call it the ‘mover’ and ‘agitator of the universe’.
As the poet has expressed:
totamque infusa per artus,
mens agitat molem, et toto se corpore miscet. 2
[pervading its members, mind stirs the whole mass and
mingles with the whole body]
The Platonists call it ‘world artificer’. They believe that it proceeds from
the higher world, which is indeed one, to this sensible world, which is
divided into many, and where, because of the separations of its parts, both
harmony and discord reign. This intellect, infusing and instilling something
of its own into matter, while itself remaining immobile and undisturbed,
produces all things. The hermeticists say that it is ‘most fecund in
seeds’ or yet that it is the ‘seed sower’, because it impregnates matter with
all forms, which, according to their nature and manner of being, succeed
in shaping, forming and weaving matter in ways that are so remarkable and
numerous that they cannot be ascribed to chance, nor to any other principle
incapable of differentiation and arrangement. Orpheus calls it ‘the eye
of the world’, because it sees both the inside and outside of all natural
things, in order that they may succeed in producing and maintaining themselves
in their proper proportions, intrinsically as well as extrinsically.
Empedocles calls it ‘the differentiator’, since it never tires of distinguishing
the forms confused within nature’s bosom, and of summoning the generation
of one from the corruption of another. Plotinus says it is ‘the father
and progenitor’, because it distributes seeds in nature’s field and is the
proximate dispenser of forms. As for us, we call it the ‘internal artificer’,
because it shapes matter, forming it from inside like a seed or root shooting
forth and unfolding the trunk, from within the trunk thrusting out the
boughs, from inside the boughs the derived branches, and unfurling buds
from within these. From therein it forms, fashions and weaves, as with
nerves, the leaves, flowers and fruits, and it is from the inside that, at certain
times, it calls back its sap from the leaves and the fruits to the twigs,
from the twigs to the branches, from the branch to the trunk, from the
trunk to the root. Similarly, in animals, it begins by deploying its work from
the seed and from the centre of the heart, towards the outer members, and
from these it finally gathers back towards the heart the faculties it had
2 Virgil, Aeneid, VI, 726-7.
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