The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna
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ever that it grasps and moulds.
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Therefore we must ascend again towards the Good, the desired of every Soul. Anyone that has seen This, knows what I intend when I say
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that it is beautiful. Even the desire of it is to be desired as a Good. To attain it is for those that will take the upward path, who will set all their forces towards it, who will divest themselves of all that we have put on in our descent : — so, to those that approach the Holy Celebrations of the Mysteries, there are appointed purifications and the laying aside of the garments worn before, and the entry in nakedness — until, passing, on the upward way, all that is other than the God, each in the sohtude of himself shall behold that solitary-dwelling Existence, the Apart, the Unmingled, the Pure, that from Which all things depend, for Which all look and live and act and know, the Source of Life and of Intellection and of Being.
And one that shall know this vision — with what passion of love shall he not be seized, with what pang of desire, what longing to be molten into one with This, what wondering delight ! If he that has never seen this Being must hunger for It as for all his welfare, he that has known must love and reverence It as the very Beauty ; he will be flooded with awe and gladness, stricken by a salutary terror ; he loves with a veritable love, with sharp desire ; all other loves than this he must despise, and disdain all that once seemed fair.
This, indeed, is the mood even of those who, having witnessed the manifestation of Gods or Supernals, can never again feel the old dehght in the comehness of material forms ; what then are we to think of one that contemplates Absolute Beauty in Its essential integrity, no accumulation of flesh and matter, no dweller on earth or in the heavens — so perfect Its purity — far above all such things in that they are non-essential, composite, not primal but descending from This ?
Beholding this Being — the Choragos of all Existence, the Self- Intent that ever gives forth and never takes — resting, rapt, in the vision and possession of so lofty a loveliness, growing to Its hkeness, what Beauty can the soul yet lack ? For This, the Beauty supreme, the absolute, and the primal, fashions Its lovers to Beauty and makes them also worthy of love.
And for This, the sternest and the uttermost combat is set before the Souls ; all our labour is for This, lest we be left without part in this
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y supreme, the absolute, and the primal, fashions Its lovers to Beauty and makes them also worthy of love.
And for This, the sternest and the uttermost combat is set before the Souls ; all our labour is for This, lest we be left without part in thisp. 87 noblest vision, which to attain is to be blessed in the blissful sight, which to fail of is to fail utterly.
For not he that has failed of the joy that is in colour or in visible forms, not he that has failed of power or of honours or of kingdom has failed, but only he that has failed of only This, for WTiose winning he should renounce kingdoms and command over earth and ocean and sky, if only, -spuming the world of sense from beneath his feet, and straining to This, he may see.
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But what must we do ? How lies the path ? How come to \ision of the inaccessible Beauty, dwelling as if in consecrated precincts, apart from the common w’ays where ah may see, even the profane ?
He that has the strength, let him arise and withdraw into himself, foregoing all that is known by the eyes, turning away for ever from the material beauty that once made his joy. When he perceives those shapes of grace that show in body, let him not pursue ; he must know them for copies, vestiges, shadows, and hasten away towards That they tell of. For if anyone follow what is like a beautiful shape playing over water — is there not a myth telling in symbol of such a dupe, how he sank into the depths of the current and was swept away to nothingness ? So too, one that is held by material beauty and will not break free shall be precipitated, not in body but in Soul, down to the dark depths loathed of the Intellective-Being, where, blind even in the Lower-W’orld, he shall have commerce only with shadow’s, there as here.
“ Let us flee then to the beloved Fatherland ” : this is the soundest counsel. But what is this flight ? How are we to gain the open sea ? For Odysseus is surely a parable to us when he commands the flight from the sorceries of Circe or Calypso — not content to linger for all the pleasure offered to his eyes and all the delight of sense filling his days.
The Fatherland to us is There whence we have come, and There is
The Father.
Wliat then is our course, what the manner of our flight ? This is not a journey for the feet ; the feet bring us only from land to land ; nor
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need you think of coach or ship to carry you away ; all this order of things you must set aside and refuse to see : you must close the eyes and call instead upon another vision which e feet ; the feet bring us only from land to land ; nor
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need you think of coach or ship to carry you away ; all this order of things you must set aside and refuse to see : you must close the eyes and call instead upon another vision which is to be waked within you, a vision, the birth-right of all, which few turn to use.
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And this inner vision, what is its operation ?
Newly awakened it is all too feeble to bear the ultimate splendour. Therefore the Soul must be trained — to the habit of remarking, first, all noble pursuits, then the works of beauty produced not by the labour of the arts but by the virtue of men known for their goodness : lastly, you must search the souls of those that have shaped these beautiful forms.
But how are you to see into a virtuous soul and know its loveliness ?
Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful : he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also : cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godhke splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine.
When you know that you have become this perfect work, when you are self-gathered in the purity of your being, nothing now remaining that can shatter that inner unity, nothing from without cUnging to the authentic man, when you find yourself wholly true to your essential nature, wholly that only veritable Light which is not measured by space, not narrowed to any circumscribed form nor again diffused as a thing void of term, but ever unmeasurable as something greater than all measure and more than all quantity — when you perceive that you have grown to this, you are now become very vision : now call up all your confidence, strike forward yet a step — you need a guide no longer — strain, and see.
This is the only eye that sees the mighty Beauty. If the eye that
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BEAUTY
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adventures the vision be dimmed by vice, impure, or weak, and unable in its cowardly blenching to see the uttermost brightness, then it sees nothing even though another point to what lies plain to sight before it. To any vision must be brought an eye adapted to what is to be seen, and having some likeness to it.