340 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



such as it is in the divine unity : in vain should 

 we look for the Ideas of Plato within the God 

 of Aristotle. But if only we imagine the God of 

 Aristotle in a sort of refraction of himself, or simply 

 inclining toward the world, at once the Platonic Ideas 

 are seen to pour themselves out of him, as if they 

 were involved in the unity of his essence : so rays 

 stream out from the sun, which nevertheless did not 

 contain them. It is probably this possibility of an 

 outpouring of Platonic Ideas from the Aristotelian 

 God that is meant, in the philosophy of Aristotle, 

 by the active intellect, the vovs that has been called 

 TToiTjriKu^ that is, by what is essential and yet un 

 conscious in human intelligence. The z oi)? TTOL^TLKO^ is 

 Science entire, posited all at once, which the conscious, 

 discursive intellect is condemned to reconstruct with 

 difficulty, bit by bit. There is then within us, or 

 rather behind us, a possible vision of God, as the 

 Alexandrians said, a vision always virtual, never actually 

 realized by the conscious intellect. In this intuition 

 we should see God expand in Ideas. This it is 

 that &quot;does everything,&quot; 1 playing in relation to the 

 discursive intellect, which moves in time, the same role 

 as the motionless Mover himself plays in relation to the 

 movement of the heavens and the course ot things. 



There is, then, immanent in the philosophy of 

 Ideas, a particular conception of causality, which it is 

 important to bring into full light, because it is that 

 which each of us will reach when, in order to ascend 

 to the origin of things, he follows to the end the 

 natural movement of the intellect. True, the ancient 



Aristotle, De anima, 430 a 14 Ka.1 ^CTTLV 6 p^v roioOros vovs 



6 5t r$ jrdvra TrotetV, u&amp;gt;j is rij, olov TO 0u)s rpbirov ydp TLVO. KO.I 

 r6 0wJ Trotei rd 8vva.fj.ei. fora, x/^ara tvepyfiq. 



