11. How can the intelligible, which has no extension, penetrate into the whole body of the universe, which has no such extension? How does it remain single and identical, and how does it not split up? This question has been raised several times, and we sought to answer it, so as to leave no uncertainty. We have often demonstrated that the things are thus; nevertheless, it will be well to give some further convincing proofs, although we have already given the strongest demonstration, and the most evident one, by teaching the quality of the nature of the intelligible, explaining that it is not a vast mass, some enormous stone which, located in space, might be said to occupy an extension determined by its own magnitude, and would be incapable of going beyond its limits; for its mass and its power would be measured by its own nature, which is that of a stone. (The intelligible Essence, on the contrary,) being the primary nature, has no extension that is limited or measured, because it itself is the measure of the sense-nature; and because it is the universal power without any determinate magnitude. Nor is it within time, because the time is continually divided into intervals, while eternity dwells in its own identity, dominating and surpassing time by its perpetual power, though this seemed to have an unlimited course. Time may be compared to a line which, while extending indefinitely, ever depends from a point, and turns around it; so, that, into whatever place it advances, it always reveals the immovable point around which it moves in a circle. If, by nature, time be in the same relation (as is this line with its centre), and if the identical Essence be infinite by its power as well as by its eternity, by virtue of its infinite power it will have to produce a nature which would in some way be parallel to this infinite power, which rises with it, and depends from it, and which finally, by the movable course of time, tries to equal this power which remains movable in itself.[6] But then even this power of the intelligible Essence remains superior to the universe, because the former determines the extension of the latter. HOW THE INFERIOR NATURE CAN PARTICIPATE IN THE INTELLIGIBLE. How could then the inferior nature participate in the intelligible, at least to the extent of its capacity? Because the intelligible is everywhere present in its entirety, although, by the impotence of the things that receive it, it be not perceived in its entirety in each of these things. The identical essence is present everywhere, not indeed as the material triangle, which is multiple in respect to number in several subjects, although it be identical therein in respect to being; but as the immaterial triangle from which depend material triangles.