The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna
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the series ends in the faculties of generation and growth and of all production of offspring — offspring efficient in its turn, in contradistinction to the engendering Soul which (has no direct action within matter but) produces by mere inclination towards what it fashions.
9-
That Soul, then, in us, will in its nature stand apart from all that can cause any of the evils which man does or suffers ; for all such evil, as we have seen, belongs only to the Animate, the Couplement.
But there is a difficulty in understanding how the Soul can go guiltless if our mentation and reasoning are vested in it : for all this lower kind of knowledge is delusion and is the cause of much of what is evil.
When we have done evil it is because we have been worsted by our baser side — for a man is many — by desire or rage or some evil image : the misnamed reasoning that takes up with the false, in reality fancy, has not stayed for the judgement of the Reasoning-Principle : we have acted at the call of the less worthy, just as in matters of the sense-sphere we sometimes see falsely because we credit only the lower perception, that of the Couplement, without appl5dng the tests of the Reasoning- Faculty.
The Intellectual-Principle has held aloof from the act and so is guiltless ; or, as we may state it, all depends on whether we ourselves have or have not put ourselves in touch with the Intellectual-Realm either in the Intellectual-Principle or within ourselves ; for it is possible at once to possess and not to use.
Thus we have marked off what belongs to the Couplement from what stands by itself : the one group has the character of body and never exists apart from body, while all that has no need of body for its
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manifestation belongs peculiarly to Soul : and the Understanding, as passing judgement upon Sense-Impressions, is at the point of the vision of Ideal-Forms, seeing them as it were with an answering sensation (i.e. with consciousness) this last is at any rate true of the Understanding in the Veritable Soul. For Understanding, the true, is the Act of the Intellections : in many of its manifestations it is the assimilation and reconciliation of the outer to the inner.
Thus in spite of all, the Soul is at peace as to itself and within itself : all the changes and all the turmoil we experience are the issue of what is subjoined to the Soul, and are, as we have said, the states and experiences of this elusive “ Couplement.”
10.
spite of all, the Soul is at peace as to itself and within itself : all the changes and all the turmoil we experience are the issue of what is subjoined to the Soul, and are, as we have said, the states and experiences of this elusive “ Couplement.”
10.
It wiU be objected, that if the Soul constitutes the We (the personality) and We are subject to these states then the Soul must be subject to them, and similarly that what We do must be done by the Soul.
But it has been observed that the Couplement, too — especially before our emancipation — is a member of this total We, and in fact what the body experiences we say We experience. This We then covers two distinct notions ; sometimes it includes the brute-part, sometimes it transcends the brute. The body is brute touched to life ; the true man is the other, going pure of the body, natively endowed with the virtues which belong to the Intellectual-Activity, virtues whose seat is the Separate Soul, the Soul which even in its dwelling here may be kept apart. (This Soul constitutes the human being) for when it has wholly withdrawn, that other Soul which is a radiation (or emanation) from it withdraws also, drawn after it.
Those virtues, on the other hand, which spring not from contemplative wisdom but from custom or practical discipline belong to the Couplement : to the Couplement, too, belong the vices ; they are its repugnances, desires, sympathies.
And Friendship ?
This emotion belongs sometimes to the lower part, sometimes to the interior man.
I. I. 12]
THE ANIMATE AND THE MAN
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11.
In childhood the main activity is in the Couplement and there is but little irradiation from the higher principles of our being : but when these higher principles act but feebly or rarely upon us their action is directed towards the Supreme ; they work upon us only when they stand at the mid-point.
But does not the We include that phase of our being which stands above the mid-point ?
It does, but on condition that we lay hold of it : our entire nature is not ours at all times but only as we direct the mid-point upwards or downwards, or lead some particular phase of our nature from potentiality or native character into act.
And the animals, in what way or degree do they possess the Animate ?
If there be in them, as the opinion goes, human Souls that have sinned, then the Animating-Principle in its separable phase does not enter directly into the brute ; it is there but not there to them ; they are aware only of the image of the Soul (only of the lower Soul) and of that only by being aware of the that have sinned, then the Animating-Principle in its separable phase does not enter directly into the brute ; it is there but not there to them ; they are aware only of the image of the Soul (only of the lower Soul) and of that only by being aware of the body organised and determined by that image.
If there be no human Soul in them, the Animate is constituted for them by a radiation from the All-Soul.
12.
But if Soul is sinless, how come the expiations ? Here surely is a contradiction ; on the one side the Soul is above all guilt ; on the other, we hear of its sin, its purification, its expiation ; it is doomed to the lower world, it passes from body to body.
We may take either view at will : they are easily reconciled.
When we tell of the sinless Soul we make Soul and Essential-Soul one and the same : it is the simple unbroken Unity.
By the Soul subject to sin we indicate a groupment, we include that other, that phase of the Soul which knows all the states and passions : the Soul in this sense is compound, all-inclusive : it falls under the conditions of the entire living experience : this compound it is that sins ; it is this, and not the other, that pays penalty.
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It is in this sense that we read of the Soul “ We saw it as those others saw the sea-god Glaukos." “ And,” reading on, “ if we mean to discern the nature of the Soul we must strip it free of all that has gathered about it, must see into the philosophy of it, examine with what Existences it has touch and by Idnship to what Existences it is what it is.”
Thus the Life is one thing, the Act is another and the Expiator yet another. The retreat and sundering, then, must be not from this body only, but from every alien accruement. Such accruement takes place at birth ; or rather birth is the coming-into-being of that other (lower) phase of the Soul. For the meaning of birth has been indicated elsewhere ; it is brought about by a descent of the Soul, something being given off by the Soul other than that actually coming down in the declension.
Then the Soul has let this image fall ? And this declension is it not certainly sin ?
If the declension is no more than the illuminating of an object beneath, it constitutes no sin : the shadow is to be attributed not to the luminary but to the object illuminated ; if the object were not there, the light could cause no shadow.
And the Soul is said to go down, to decline, only in that the object it illuminates lives by its life.