The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna

e existence of that Matter does not imply the potential there too ; for even if Matter there exists in another mode than here, every Being there will have its Matter, its form and the union of the two (and therefore the potential, separable from the actual). What answer is to be made ?

Simply, that even the Matter there is Idea, just as the Soul, an Idea, is Matter to another (a higher) Being.

But relatively to that higher, the Soul is a potentiality ?

No : for the Idea (to which it is Matter) is integral to the Soul and does not look to a future ; the distinction between the Soul and its Idea is purely mental : the Idea and the Matter it includes are conceived as a conjunction but are essentially one Kind : remember that Aristotle makes his Fifth Body immaterial.

But surely Potentiality exists in the Soul ? Surely the Soul is potentially the living-being of this world before it has become so ? Is it not potentially musical, and everything else that it has not been and becomes ? Does not this imply potentiality even in the Intellectual Existences ?

No : the Soul is not potentially these things ; it is a Power towards them.

But after what mode does Actualisation exist in the Intellectual
Realm ?

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Is it the Actualisation of a statue, where the combination is realised because the Form-Idea has mastered each separate constituent of the total ?

No : it is that every constituent there is a Form-Idea and, thus, is perfect in its Being.

There is in the Intellectual Principle no progression from some power capable of intellection to the Actuality of intellection : such a progression would send us in search of a Prior Principle not progressing from Power to Act ; there all stands ever realised. Potentiality requires an intervention from outside itself to bring it to the actualisation which otherwise cannot be ; but what possesses, of itself, identity unchangeable for ever is an actualisation : all the Firsts then are actualisations, simply because eternally and of themselves they possess aU that is necessary to their completion.

This applies equally to the Soul, not to that in Matter but to that in the Intellectual Sphere ; and even that in Matter, the Soul of Growth, is an actualisation in its difference ; it possesses actually (and not, like material things, merely in image) the Being that belongs to it.

the Soul, not to that in Matter but to that in the Intellectual Sphere ; and even that in Matter, the Soul of Growth, is an actualisation in its difference ; it possesses actually (and not, like material things, merely in image) the Being that belongs to it.

Then, everything, in the intellectual is in actualisation and so all
There is Actuality ?

Why not ? If that Nature is rightly said to be “ Sleepless,” and to be Life and the noblest mode of Life, the noblest Activities must be there ; aU then is actualisation there, everything is an Actuality, for everything is a Life, and all Place there is the Place of Life, in the true sense the ground and spring of Soul and of the Intellectual Principle.

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Now, in general anything that has a potentiality is actually something else, and this potentiality of the future mode of being is an existing mode.

But what we think of as Matter, what we assert to be the potentiahty of all things, cannot be said to be actually any one being among beings ; if it were of itself any definite being, it could not be potentially all.

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POTENTIALITY AND ACTUALITY

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If, then, it is not among existences, it must necessarily be without existence.

How, therefore, can it be actually anything ?

The answer is that while Matter can not be any of the things which are foimded upon it, it may quite well be something else, admitting that aU existences are not rooted in Matter.

But once more, if it is excluded from the entities founded upon it and all these are Beings, it must itself be a Non-Being.

It is, further, by definition, formless and therefore not an Idea : it cannot then be classed among things of the Intellectual Realm, and so is, once more, a Non-Being. Falling, as regards both worlds, under Non-Being, it is aU the more decidedly the Non-Being.

It has eluded the Nature of the Authentic Existences ; it has even failed to come up with the things to which a spurious existence can be attributed — for it is not even a phantasm of Reason as these are — how is it possible to include it under any mode of Being ?

And if it falls under no mode of Being, what can it actually be ?

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How can we talk of it ? How can it be the Matter of real things ?

It is talked of, and it serves, precisely, as a Potentiality.

And, as being a Potentiality, it is not of the order of the thing it is to become : its existence is no more than an announcement of a future, as it were a thrust forward to what is to come into existence.

d of, and it serves, precisely, as a Potentiality.

And, as being a Potentiality, it is not of the order of the thing it is to become : its existence is no more than an announcement of a future, as it were a thrust forward to what is to come into existence.

As Potentiality then, it is not any definite thing but the potentiality of everything : being nothing in itself — beyond what being Matter amounts to — it is not in actualisation. For if it were actually something, that actualised something would not be Matter, or at least not Matter out and out, but merely Matter in the limited sense in which bronze is the matter of the statue.

And its Non-Being must be no mere difference from Being.

Motion, for example, is different from Being, but plays about it, springing from it and living within it : Matter is, so to speak, the out-

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cast of Being, it is utterly removed, irredeemably what it was from the beginning : in origin it was Non-Being and so it remains.

Nor are we to imagine that, standing away at the very beginning from the universal circle of Beings, it was thus necessarily an active Something or that it became a Something. It has never been able to annex for itself even a visible outline from all the forms under which it has sought to creep : it has always pursued something other than itself ; it was never more than a Potentiality towards its next : where all the circle of Being ends, there only is it manifest ; discerned underneath things produced after it, it is remoter (from Real-Being) even than they.

Grasped, then, as an underlie in each order of Being, it can be no actualisation of either : all that is allowed to it is to be a Potentiality, a weak and blurred phantasm, a thing incapable of a Shape of its own.

Its actuality is that of being a phantasm, the actuality of being a falsity ; and the false in actualisation is the veritably false, which again is Authentic Non-Existence.

So that Matter, as the Actualisation of Non-Being, is all the more decidedly Non-Being, is Authentic Non-Existence.

Thus, since the very reality of its Nature is situated in Non-Being, it is in no degree the Actualisation of any definite Being.

If it is to be present at all, it cannot be an Actualisation, for then it would not be the stray from Authentic Being which it is, the thing having its Being in Non-Beingness : for, note, in the case of things whose Being is a falsity, to take away the falsity is to take away what Being they have, and if we introduce actualisation into things whose Being and Essence is Potentiality, we destroy the