The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna

Soul’s power may be taken as resident at its centre.

Here, however, we must distinguish between a centre in reference to the two different natures, body and Soul.

In body, centre is a point of place ; in Soul it is a source, the source of some other nature. The word, which without qualification would mean the midpoint of a spheric mass, may serve in the double reference ; and, as in a material mass so in the Soul, there must be a centre, that around which the object. Soul or material mass, revolves.

The Soul exists in revolution around God to whom it clings in love, holding itself to the utmost of its power near to Him as the Being on which all depends ; and since it cannot coincide with God it circles about Him.

Why then do not all souls (i.e. the lower, also, as those of men and animals) thus circle about the Godhead ?

Every Soul does in its own rank and place.

And why not our very bodies, also ?

Because the forward path is characteristic of body and because all the body's impulses are to other ends and because what in us is of this circling nature (the soul) is hampered in its motion by the clay it bears with it, while in the higher realm everything flows on its course.

p. 158

PLOTINUS

lightly and easily, with nothing to check it, once there is any principle of motion in it at all.

And it may very well be that even in us the Spirit which dwells with the Soul does thus circle about the divinity. For since God is omnipresent the Soul desiring perfect union must take the circular course : God is not stationed.

Similarly Plato attributes to the stars not only the spheric movement belonging to the universe as a whole but also to each a revolution around their common centre ; each — not by way of thought but by links of natural necessity — has in its own place taken hold of God and exults.

3-

The truth may be resumed in this way : — -

There is a lowest power of the Soul, a nearest to earth, and this is interwoven throughout the entire universe ; another phase possesses sensation, while yet another includes the Reason which is concerned with the objects of sensation : this higher phase holds itself to the spheres, poised towards the Above but hovering over the lesser Soul and giving forth to it an effluence which makes it more intensely vital.

The lower Soul is moved by the higher which, besides encircling and supporting it, actually resides in whatsoever part of it has thrust upwards and attained the spheres.

the lesser Soul and giving forth to it an effluence which makes it more intensely vital.

The lower Soul is moved by the higher which, besides encircling and supporting it, actually resides in whatsoever part of it has thrust upwards and attained the spheres. The lower then, ringed round by the higher and answering its call, turns and tends towards it ; and this upward tension communicates motion to the material frame in which it is involved : for if a single point in a spheric mass is in any degree moved, without being drawn away from the rest, it moves the whole, and the sphere is set in motion. Something of the same kind happens in the case of our bodies : the unspatial movement of the Soul — in happiness, for instance, or at the idea of some pleasant event — sets up a spatial movement in the body : the Soul, attaining in its own region some good which increases its sense of life, moves towards what pleases it ; and so, by force of the union established in the order of nature, it moves the body, in the body’s region, that is in space.

11,3. >1

ARE THE STARS CAUSES ?

p. 159

As for that phase of the Soul in which sensation is vested, it, too, (like the higher) takes its good from the Supreme above itself and moves, rejoicingly, in quest of it : and since the object of its desire is everywhere, it too ranges always through the entire scope of the universe.

The Intellectual-Principle has no such progress in any region ; its movement is a stationary act, for it turns upon itself.

And this is why the All, circling as it does, is at the same time at rest.

THIRD TRACTATE
Are the Stars Causes?

I.

That the circuit of the stars indicates definite events to come but without being the cause direct (as the general opinion holds) of all that happens, has been elsewhere affirmed, and proved by some modicum of argument : but the subject demands more precise and detailed investigation for to take the one view rather than the other is of no small moment.

The belief is that the planets in their courses actually produce not merely such conditions as poverty, wealth, health and sickness but even ugliness and beauty and, gravest of all, vices and virtue and the very acts that spring from these qualities, the definite doings of each moment of virtue or vice. We are to suppose the stars to be annoyed with men — and upon matters in which men, moulded to what they are by the stars themselves, can surely do them no wrong.

acts that spring from these qualities, the definite doings of each moment of virtue or vice. We are to suppose the stars to be annoyed with men — and upon matters in which men, moulded to what they are by the stars themselves, can surely do them no wrong.

They will be distributing what pass for their good gifts, not out of kindness towards the recipients but as they themselves are affected pleasantly or disagreeably at the various points of their course ; so that they must be supposed to change their plans as they stand at their zeniths or are declining.

More absurdly stiU, some of them are supposed to be malicious and others to be helpful, and yet the evil stars will (in certain positions) bestow favours and the benevolent act harshly ; further, their action alters as they see each other or not, so that, after all, they possess no i6o

PLOTINUS

definite nature but vary according to their angles of aspect ; a star is kindly when it sees one of its fellows but changes at sight of another : and there is even a distinction to be made in the seeing as it occurs in this figure or in that. Lastly, all acting together, the fused influence is different again from that of each single star, just as the blending of distinct fluids gives a mixture unhke any of them.

Since these opinions and others of the same order are prevalent, it will be well to examine them carefully one by one, beginning with the fundamental question : —

2.

Are these planets to be thought of as soulless or unsouled ?

Suppose them, first, to be without Soul.

In that case they can purvey only heat or cold— if cold from the stars can be thought of — that is to say, any communication from them will affect only our bodily nature, since all they have to communicate to us is merely corporeal. This implies that no considerable change can be caused in the bodies affected since emanations merely corporeal cannot differ greatly from star to star, and must, moreover, blend upon earth into one collective resultant : at most the differences would be such as depend upon local position, upon nearness or farness with regard to the centre of influence. This reasoning, of course, is as valid of any cold emanation there may be as of the warm.

Now, what is there in such corporeal action to account for the various classes and kinds of men, learned and illiterate, scholars as against orators, musicians as against people of other professions ? Can a power merely physical make rich or poor ? Can it bring about such conditions as in no sense depend upon the interaction of corporeal elements