The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna

ced, 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 virtue and virtue is not The Good but merely the good thing by which Matter is brought to order.

How can there be any contrary to the Absolute Good, when the absolute has no quality ?

Besides, is there any universal necessity that the existence of one of two contraries should entail the existence of the other ? Admit that the existence of one is often accompanied by the existence of the other

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— sickness and health, for example — yet there is no universal compulsion.

Perhaps, however, our author did not mean that this was universally true ; he is speaking only of The Good.

But then, if The Good is an essence, and still more, if It is that which transcends all existence, how can It have any contrary ?

That there is nothing contrary to essence is certain in the case of particular existences — established by practical proof — but not in the quite different case of the Universal.

But of what nature would this contrary be, the contrary to universal existence and in general to the Primals ?

To essential existence would be opposed the non-existence ; to the nature of Good, some principle and source of evil. Both these will be sources, the one of what is good, the other of what is evil ; and all within the domain of the one principle is opposed, as contrary, to the entire domain of the other, and this in a contrariety more violent than any existing between secondary things.

For these last are opposed as members of one species or of one genus, and, within that common ground, they participate in some common quality.

In the case of the Primals or Universals there is such complete separation that what is the exact negation of one group constitutes the very nature of the other ; we have diametric contrariety if by contrariety we mean the extreme of remoteness.

Now to the content of the divine order, the fixed quaUty, the measuredness and so forth — there is opposed the content of the evil principle, its unfixedness, measurelessness and so forth : total is opposed to total. The existence of the one genus is a falsity, primarily, essentially, a falseness : the other genus has Essence- Authentic : the opposition is of truth to lie ; essence is opposed to essence.

Thus we see that it is not universally true that an Essence can have no contrary.

ce of the one genus is a falsity, primarily, essentially, a falseness : the other genus has Essence- Authentic : the opposition is of truth to lie ; essence is opposed to essence.

Thus we see that it is not universally true that an Essence can have no contrary.

In the case of fire and water we would admit contrariety if it were not for their common element, the Matter, about which are gathered the

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warmth and dryness of one and the dampness and cold of the other : if there were only present what constitutes their distinct kinds, the common ground being absent, there would be, here also, essence contrary to essence.

In sum, things utterly sundered, having nothing in common, standing at the remotest poles, are opposites in nature : the contrariety does not depend upon quality or upon the existence of a distinct genus of beings, but upon the utmost difference, clash in content, clash in effect.

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But why does the existence of the Principle of Good necessarily comport the existence of a Principle of Evil ? Is it because the All necessarily comports the existence of Matter ? Yes : for necessarily this All is made up of contraries : it could not exist if Matter did not. The Nature of this Kosmos is, therefore, a blend ; it is blended from the Intellectual-Principle and Necessity : what comes into it from God is good ; evil is from the Ancient Kind which, we read, is the underlying Matter not yet brought to order by the Ideal-Form.

But, since the expression “ this place " must be taken to mean the
All, how explain the words “ mortal nature ” ?

The answer is in the passage (in which the Father of Gods addresses the Divinities of the lower sphere), “ Since you possess only a derivative being, you are not immortals . . . but by my power you shall escape dissolution.”

The escape, we read, is not a matter of place, but of acquiring virtue, of disengaging the self from the body ; this is the escape from Matter. Plato explains somewhere how a man frees himself and how he remains bound ; and the phrase “ to Hve among the gods ” means to live among the Intelligible-Existents, for these are the Immortals.

There is another consideration establishing the necessary existence of Evil.

Given that The Good is not the only existent thing, it is inevitable that, by the outgoing from it or, if the phrase be preferred, the con-

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lOI tinuous down-going or away-going from it, there should be produced a Last, something after which nothing more can be produced : this will be Evil.

it is inevitable that, by the outgoing from it or, if the phrase be preferred, the con-

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lOI tinuous down-going or away-going from it, there should be produced a Last, something after which nothing more can be produced : this will be Evil.

As necessarily as there is Something after the First, so necessarily there is a Last : this Last is Matter, the thing which has no residue of good in it : here is the necessity of Evil.

8.

But there will still be some to deny that it is through this Matter that we ourselves become evil.

They will say that neither ignorance nor wicked desires arise in Matter. Even if they admit that the unhappy condition within us is due to the pravity inherent in body, they will urge that still the blame lies not in the Matter itself but with the Form present in it — such Form as heat, cold, bitterness, saltness and all other conditions perceptible to sense, or again such states as being full or void — not in the concrete signification but in the presence or absence of just such forms. In a word, they will argue, all particularity in desires and even in perverted judgements upon things, can be referred to such causes, so that Evil lies in this Form much more than in the mere Matter.

Yet, even with all this, they can be compelled to admit that Matter is the Evil.

For, the quality (form) that has entered into Matter does not act as an entity apart from the Matter, any more than axe-shape will cut apart from iron. Further, Forms lodged in Matter are not the same as they would be if they remained within themselves ; they are Reason- Principles Materialised, they are corrupted in the Matter, they have absorbed its nature : essential fire does not burn, nor do any of the essential entities effect, of themselves alone, the operation which, once they have entered into Matter, is traced to their action.

Matter becomes mistress of what is manifested through it : it corrupts and destroys the incomer, it substitutes its own opposite character and kind, not in the sense of opposing, for example, concrete cold to concrete warmth, but by setting its own formlessness against the

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Form of heat, shapelessness to shape, excess and defect to the duly ordered. Thus, in sum, what enters into Matter ceases to belong to itself, comes to belong to Matter, just as, in the nourishment of living beings, what is taken in does not remain as it came, but is turned into, say, dog’s blood and all that goes to make a dog, becomes, in fact, any of the humours of any recipient.