1. Flat World and Variable Intensities

Picture a flat, valueless world.

This is a world where nothing is more beautiful than another thing, where truth is no different from fiction, where fictions, illusions, and contradictions have some actual value, and where what is evil is not negative and subtracts nothing from the world. Each thing is equally in the world. This is clearly the formal world of Book I. Not only is this world possible, but it is the only world. Nonetheless, this world is not the objective and eventual universe in which we live together as objects exchangeable and replaceable with other objects. It is the world where each one or each thing is alone and equal.

The flat, valueless world is a world devoid of intensities. Nothing is either more or less than another thing. Everything is equal.

The formal world is without intensity. The objective and eventual universe includes variable intensities, lives, and works. Whereas no thing can formally be either more or less than another thing, the universe is filled with objects that are objectively either more or less than others. This not only means that objects and events materially and symbolically comprehend and augment each other; it means that each object is likely to be either more or less that which it is, in that which it is, and for that which it is.

In the objective and eventual universe, nothing is flat. Everything possesses a continuous, intensive depth, since the extension of the objective and eventual division is doubled by either more or less being or comprehension, which has no formal meaning, only an objective meaning. All objects are likely to be either more or less beautiful, either more or less true, or either more or less good.