Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 2 In Chronological Order,...

4. (3). If anybody were to ask nature why she produces, Nature, if at all willing to listen and answer would say, "You should not have questioned me; you should have tried to understand, keeping silence, as I do; for I am not in the habit of speaking. What were you to understand? Here it is. First, what is produced is the work of my silent speculation, a contemplation effected by my nature; for, myself being born of contemplation, mine is a contemplative nature. Besides, that which in me contemplates, produces a work of contemplation, like geometricians who, while contemplating, describe figures. For it is not in describing figures, but in contemplating, that I let drop from within me the lines which outline the forms of the bodies. I preserve within me the disposition of my mother (the universal Soul), and that of the principles that beget me (the formal 'reasons'). The latter, indeed, are born of contemplation: I was begotten in the same way. These principles gave birth to me without any action, or the mere fact that they are more powerful reasons, and that they contemplate themselves."