The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna
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The Intellectual Realm allows no more than these and no fewer.
Those who hold to fewer Principles must hold the identity of either Intellectual-Principle and Soul or of Intellectual-Principle and The First ; but we have abundantly shown that these are distinct.
It remains for us to consider whether there are more than these Three.
Now what other (Divine) Kinds could there be ? No Principles of the universe could be found at once simpler and more transcendent than this whose existence we have affirmed and described.
They will scarcely urge upon us the doubling of the Principle in Act by a Principle in Potentiality. It is absurd to seek such a plurahty by distinguishing between potentiality and actuality in the case of immaterial beings whose existence is in Act — even in lower forms no such division can be made — and we cannot conceive a duality in the Intellectual-Principle, one phase in some vague calm, another all astir. Under what form can we think of repose in the Intellectual Principle as contrasted with its movement or utterance ? What would the quiescence of the one phase be as against the energy of the other ?
No : the Intellectual-Principle is continuously itself, unchangeably constituted in stable Act. With movement — towards it or within it — we are in the realm of the Soul’s operation : such act is a Reason-Principle emanating from it and entering into Soul, thus made an Intellectual Soul, but in no sense creating an intermediate Principle to stand between the two.
Nor are we warranted in affirming a plurality of Intellectual Principles on the ground that there is one that knows and thinks and another knowing that it knows and thinks. For whatever distinction be possible in the Divine between its Intellectual Act and its Consciousness of that Act, still all must be one projection not imaware of its own operation : it would be absurd to imagine any such unconsciousness in the Authentic Intelligence ; the knowing principle must be one and the selfsame with that which knows of the knowing.
II. 9. 2]
“AGAINST THE GNOSTICS”
p. 217
The contrary supposition would give us two beings, one that merely knows, and another — a separate being — that knows of the act of knowing.
If we are answered that the distinction is merely a process of our thought, then, at once, the theory of a plurality in the Divine Hypostasis is abandoned : further, the question is opened whether our thought can entertain a knowing principle so narrowed to its knowing as not to know that it knows — a limitation which would be charged as imbecility even in ourselves, who if but of he Divine Hypostasis is abandoned : further, the question is opened whether our thought can entertain a knowing principle so narrowed to its knowing as not to know that it knows — a limitation which would be charged as imbecility even in ourselves, who if but of very ordinary moral force are always master of our emotions and mental processes.
No : The Divine Mind in its mentation thinks itself ; the object of the thought is nothing external : Thinker and Thought are one ; therefore in its thinking and knowing it possesses itself, observes itself and sees itself not as something unconscious but as knowing : in this Primal Knowing it must include, as one and the same Act, the knowledge of the knowing ; and even the logical distinction mentioned above cannot be made in the case of the Divine ; the very eternity of its self-thinking precludes any such separation between that intellective act and the consciousness of the act.
The absurdity becomes still more blatant if we introduce yet a further distinction — after that which affirms the knowledge of the knowing, a third distinction affirming the knowing of the knowledge of the knowing : yet there is no reason against carrying on the division for ever and ever.
To increase the Primals by making the Supreme Mind engender the Reason-Principle, and this again engender in the Soul a distinct power to act as mediator between Soul and the Supreme Mind, this is to deny intellection to the Soul, which would no longer derive its Reason from the Intellectual-Principle but from an intermediate : the Soul then would possess not the Reason-Principle but an image of it : the Soul could not know the Intellectual-Principle ; it could have no intellection.
2.
Therefore we must affirm no more than these three Primals : we are not to introduce superfluous distinctions which their nature rejects.
2I8
PLOTINUS
We are to proclaim one Intellectual-Principle unchangeably the same, in no way subject to decline, acting in imitation, as true as its nature allows, of the Father.
And as to our own Soul we are to hold that it stands, in part, always in the presence of The Divine Beings, while in part it is concerned with the things of this sphere and in part occupies a middle ground. It is one nature in graded powers ; and sometimes the Soul in its entirety is borne along by the loftiest in itself and in the Authentic Existent ; sometimes, the less noble part is dragged down and drags the mid-soul with it, though the law is that the Soul may never succumb entire.
powers ; and sometimes the Soul in its entirety is borne along by the loftiest in itself and in the Authentic Existent ; sometimes, the less noble part is dragged down and drags the mid-soul with it, though the law is that the Soul may never succumb entire.
The Soul’s disaster falls upon it when it ceases to dwell in the perfect Beauty — the appropriate dwelhng-place of that Soul which is no part and of which we too are no part — thence to pour forth into the frame of the All whatsoever the All can hold of good and beauty. There that Soul rests, free from all solicitude, not ruling by plan or policy, not redressing, but establishing order by the marvellous efficacy of its contemplation of the things above it.
For the measure of its absorption in that vision is the measure of its grace and power, and what it draws from this contemplation it communicates to the lower sphere, illuminated and illuminating always.
3-
Ever illuminated, receiving light unfailing, the All-Soul imparts it to the entire series of later Being which by this light is sustained and fostered and endowed with the fullest measure of life that each can absorb. It may be compared with a central fire warming every receptive body within range.
Our fire, however, is a thing of limited scope : given powers that have no limitation and are never cut off from the Authentic Existences, how imagine anything existing and yet failing to receive from them ?
It is of the essence of things that each gives of its being to another : without this communication. The Good would not be Good, nor the Intellectual- Principle an Intellective Principle, nor would Soul itself be what it is : the law is, “ some life after the Primal Life, a second wherep. 219 there is a first ; all linked in one unbroken chain ; all eternal ; divergent types being engendered only in the sense of being secondary.”
In other words, things commonly described as generated have never known a beginning : all has been and will be. Nor can anything disappear unless where a later form is possible : without such a future there can be no dissolution.
If we are told that there is always Matter as a possible term, we ask why then should not Matter itself come to nothingness. If we are told it may, then we ask why it should ever have been generated. If the answer comes that it had its necessary place as the ultimate of the series, we return that the necessity still holds.