Eighty-Three Different Questions Quotes

“Now if it is not correct to say or believe this, it remains that all things are set up by reason, and a man not by the same reason as a horse — for that is absurd to suppose. Therefore, single things are created with their own reasons. But where are we to think these reasons exist, if not in the mind of the creator? For he did not look outside himself, to anything placed there, in order to set up what he set up... But if these reasons of all things to be created and already created are contained in the divine mind, and if there cannot be anything in the divine mind that is not eternal and unchangeable, and if Plato calls these principal reasons of things 'Ideas', then not only are there Ideas but they are true, because they are eternal and always stay the same way, and are unchangeable. And whatever exists comes to exist, however it exists, by participation in them. But among the things set up by God, the rational soul surpasses all others, and is closest to God when it is pure. And to the extent that it clings to God in charity, to that extent, drenched in a certain way and lit up by that intelligible light, it discerns these reasons, not by bodily eyes but by that principal part of it by which it surpasses everything else, that is, by its intelligence. By this vision it becomes most blessed. These reasons, as was said, whether it is right to call them Ideas or forms or species or reasons, many are permitted to call them whatever they want, but only to a very few is it permitted to see what is true.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Eighty-Three Different Questions