that which I contain as most simple, is nothing else than this_. And after this manner it is proper to hear the geometrician addressing us. Euclid, therefore, from a negation of parts, declares to us a principle, leading to the theory of its whole subject nature. For negative discourses are proper to principles, as Parmenides teaches us, who delivers the doctrine concerning the first and last cause, by negations alone. Since every principle consists of an essence different from its flowing consequents; and the negations of these exhibit to us the property of their source. For that it is, indeed, the cause of these, yet at the same time has nothing in common with these, becomes perspicuous from a doctrine of this kind. But here a doubt may arise, how, since the phantasy receives all things invested with forms, and in a partible manner, the geometrician beholds in it the point destitute of parts? For it is not because they are reasons existing in cogitation, but the phantasy receives the resemblances of intellectual and divine forms according to its own proper nature, exhibiting in its shadowy bosom the forms of formless natures, and clothing with figure things entirely free from the affections of figure. To this ambiguity we must say, that the species of imaginative motion is neither alone partible, nor impartible; but that it proceeds from the impartible to the partible, and from the formless nature to that which is expressed by form. For if it was partible alone, it could not preserve in itself many impressions of forms, since the subsequent would obscure the pre-existent figures: for no body can contain at once, and according to the same situation, a multitude of figures; but the former will be blotted out by the succession of the latter. But if it was alone impartible, it would not be inferior to cogitation, and to soul, which surveys all things in an impartible manner. Hence, it is necessary that it should indeed begin from an impartible according to its motion, and from thence draw forth the folded and scattered form of every thing falling under cogitation, and penetrating to its shadowy receptacle: but, that it should at length end in form, figure, and interval. And if it be allotted a nature of this kind, it will, after a certain manner, contain an impartible essence: and a point, according to this, must be said to have its principal subsistence: for the form of a line is contracted in the phantasy according to this. Hence, because it possesses a twofold power, impartible and partible, it will indeed contain a point in an impartible, and intervals in a partible manner. But as the Pythagoreans define a point to be unity having position, let us consider what they mean. That numbers, indeed, are more immaterial and more pure than magnitudes, and that the principle of numbers is more simple than the principle of magnitudes, is manifest to every one: but when they say that a point is unity endued with position, they