The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna

ed as characterising the Nature of Evil must be summed under an Absolute Evil ; and every evil thing outside of this must either contain this Absolute by saturation or have taken the character of evil and become a cause of evil by consecration to this Absolute.

What will this be ?

That Kind whose place is below aU the patterns, forms, shapes, measurements and limits, that which has no trace of good by any title of its own, but (at best) takes order and grace from some Principle outside itself, a mere image as regards Absolute-Being but the Authentic Essence of Evil — in so far as Evil can have Authentic Being. In such a Kind Reason recognises the Primal Evil, Evil Absolute.

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The bodily Kind, in that it partakes of Matter is an evil thing. What form is in bodies is an untrue form : they are without life : by their own natural disorderly movement they make away with each other ; they are hindrances to the soul in its proper Act ; in their ceaseless flux they are always slipping away from Being.

Soul, on the contrary, since not every Soul is evil, is not an evil
Kind.

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What, then, is the evil Soul ?

It is, we read, the Soul that has entered into the service of that in which soul-evil is implanted by nature, in whose service the unreasoning phase of the Soul accepts evil — unmeasure, excess and shortcoming, which bring forth licentiousness, cowardice and all other flaws of the Soul, all the states, foreign to the true nature, which set up false judgements, so that the Soul comes to name things good or evil not by their true value but by the mere test of like and dislike.

But what is the root of this evil state ? how can it be brought under the causing principle indicated ?

Firstly, such a Soul is not apart from Matter, is not purely itself.
That is to say, it is touched with Unmeasure, it is shut out from the
Forming-Idea that orders and brings to measure, and this because it is
merged into a body made of Matter.

Then if the Reasoning-Faculty too has taken hurt, the Soul’s seeing is baulked by the passions and by the darkening that Matter brings to it, by its decline into Matter, by its very attention no longer to Essence but to Process — whose principle or source is, again. Matter, the Kind so evil as to saturate with its own pravity even that which is not in it but merely looks towards it.

For, whoUy without part in Good, the negation of Good, unmingled Lack, this Matter-Kind makes over to its own likeness whatsoever comes in touch with it.

d so evil as to saturate with its own pravity even that which is not in it but merely looks towards it.

For, whoUy without part in Good, the negation of Good, unmingled Lack, this Matter-Kind makes over to its own likeness whatsoever comes in touch with it.

The Soul wrought to perfection, addressed towards the Intellectual- Principle is steadfastly pure : it has turned away from Matter ; all that is undetermined, that is outside of measure, that is evil, it neither sees nor draws near ; it endures in its purity, only, and wholly, determined by the Intellectual-Principle.

The Soul that breaks away from this source of its reality to the non-perfect and non-primal is, as it were, a secondary, an image, to the loyal Soul. By its falling-away — and to the extent of the fall — it is stripped of Determination, becomes wholly indeterminate, sees darkness. Looking to what repels vision, as we look when we are said to see darkness, it has taken Matter into itself.

1.8.5]

EVIL

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But, it will be objected, if this seeing and frequenting of the darkness is due to the lack of good, the Soul’s evil has its source in that very lack ; the darkness will be merely a secondary cause — and at once the Principle of Evil is removed from Matter, is made anterior to Matter.

No : Evil is not in any and every lack ; it is in absolute lack. What falls in some degree short of the Good is not Evil ; considered in its own kind it might even be perfect, but where there is utter dearth, there we have Essential Evil, void of all share in Good ; this is the case with Matter.

Matter has not even existence whereby to have some part in Good :
Being is attributed to it by an accident of words : the truth would be
that it has Non-Being.

Mere lack brings merely Not-Goodness : Evil demands the absolute lack — though, of course, any very considerable shortcoming makes the ultimate fall possible and is already, in itself, an evil.

In fine we are not to think of Evil as some particular bad thing— injustice, for example, or any other ugly trait — but as a principle distinct from any of the particular forms in which, by the addition of certain elements, it becomes manifest. Thus there may be wickedness in the Soul ; the forms this general wickedness is to take will be determined by the environing Matter, by the faculties of the Soul that operate and by the nature of their operation, whether seeing, acting, or merely admitting impression.

here may be wickedness in the Soul ; the forms this general wickedness is to take will be determined by the environing Matter, by the faculties of the Soul that operate and by the nature of their operation, whether seeing, acting, or merely admitting impression.

But supposing things external to the Soul are to be counted Evil — sickness, poverty and so forth — how can they be referred to the principle we have described ?

Well, sickness is excess or defect in the body, which as a material organism rebels against order and measure ; ughness is but matter not mastered by Ideal-Form ; poverty consists in our need and lack of goods made necessary to us by our association with Matter whose very nature is to be one long want.

If all this be true, we cannot be, ourselves, the source of Evil, we are not evil in ourselves ; Evil was before we came to be ; the Evil which

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holds men down binds them against their will ; and for those that have the strength — not found in all men, it is true — there is a deliverance from the evils that have found lodgement in the soul.

In a word since Matter belongs only to the sensible world, vice ii' men is not the Absolute Evil ; not all men are vicious ; some overcome vice, some, the better sort, are never attacked by it ; and those who master it win by means of that in them which is not material.

6.

If this be so, how do we explain the teaching that evils can never pass away but “ exist of necessity,” that “ while evil has no place in the divine order, it haunts mortal nature and this place for ever” ?

Does this mean that heaven is clear of evil, ever moving its orderly way, spinning on the appointed path, no injustice There or any flaw, no wrong done by any power to any other but all true to the settled plan, while injustice and disorder prevail on earth, designated as “ the Mortal Kind and this Place ” ?

Not quite so ; for the precept to “ flee hence ” does not refer to earth and earthly life. The flight we read of consists not in quitting earth but in living our earth-life “ with justice and piety in the light of philosophy ” ; it is vice we are to flee, so that clearly to the writer Evil is simply vice with the sequels of vice. And when the disputant in that dialogue says that, if men could be convinced of the doctrine advanced, there would be an end of Evil, he is answered, ” That can never be : Evil is of necessity, for there must be a contrary to good.”

Still we may reasonably ask how can vice in man be a contrary to The Good in the Supernal : for vice is the contrary to