Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the individual,
potential knowledge is in time prior to actual knowledge, but in the
universe as a whole it is not prior even in time. Mind is not at one
time knowing and at another not. When mind is set free from its
present conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more:
this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its
former activity because, while mind in this sense is impassible,
mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks.
6
The thinking then of the simple objects of thought is found in those
cases where falsehood is impossible: where the alternative of true
or false applies, there we always find a putting together of objects
of thought in a quasi-unity. As Empedocles said that 'where heads of
many a creature sprouted without necks' they afterwards by Love's
power were combined, so here too objects of thought which were given
separate are combined, e.g. 'incommensurate' and 'diagonal': if the
combination be of objects past or future the combination of thought
includes in its content the date. For falsehood always involves a
synthesis; for even if you assert that what is white is not white
you have included not white in a synthesis. It is possible also to
call all these cases division as well as combination. However that may
be, there is not only the true or false assertion that Cleon is
white but also the true or false assertion that he was or will he
white.
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