The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna

“ Persons ” — are, in the briefest description —

1. The One, or First Existent.

2. The Divine Mind, or First Thinker and Thought.

3. The All-Soul, or First and Only Principle of Life.

“ Of all things the governance and the existence are in these Three.”

I. THE ONE

The First Hypostasis of the Supreme Divine Triad is variously named : often it is simply “ The First.” Envisaged logically, or dialectically, it is The One. Morally seen, it is The Good: in various other uses or aspects it is The Simple, The Absolute, The Transcendence, The Infinite, The Unconditioned: it is sometimes The Father.

It is unknowable : its nature — or its Super-Nature, its Supra-Existence — is conveyed theoretically by the simple statement that it transcends all the knowable, practically most often by negation of all Quality : thus if we call it the Good, w'e do not intend any formal affirmation of a quality within itself ; we mean only that it is the Goal or Term to which all aspires. When we affirm existence of it, we mean no more than that it does not fall within the realm of non-existents ; it transcends even the quality of Being.

TERMINOLOGY: THE INTELLECTUAL REALM

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It is not the Creator : it is scarcely even to be rightly called the First-Cause : its lonely majesty rejects all such predication of action : in this realm of the unknowable the First-Cause is, strictly, a lower principle than The First, which is not to be spoken of in any terms of human thought.

We may utter no more of it — and then under infinite reserve, appealing always to a deep sense behind the words — than, that in an ineffable, Supra-Existence, it exists, that in an ineffable Super-Act, it acts, that it is everywhere, in the sense that without its Supra-Existence nothing could be, that it is nowhere in that it is loftily alien from all else. In so far as language and all the unconquerable force of human thought drive us to speak of it as a Cause, we must keep in mind that it is so only in that its Perfection implies an Act, a production, or, in a metaphor basic with Plotinus, a “ generation ” of something other than Itself : for Existence or Supra-Existence comports expressive Act. The most perfect form of expressive Act is Thought or Intellection : the Divine Existence, or Supra- Existence, produces, therefore, a Divine-Thought or Intellection.

2. THE INTELLECTUAL-PRINCIPLE

This Divine-Thought is, of course, a Real-Being, the first “ thing ” of whom existence may, if only in some vaguer sense, be affirmed : it is an Intelligence, or rather is the Universal-Intelligence.

e, a Divine-Thought or Intellection.

2. THE INTELLECTUAL-PRINCIPLE

This Divine-Thought is, of course, a Real-Being, the first “ thing ” of whom existence may, if only in some vaguer sense, be affirmed : it is an Intelligence, or rather is the Universal-Intelligence. As the act, offspring and image of The First, it is a sort of mediation to us of the Unknowable One. It is in the Greek named ho Nous, which has often, perhaps not very happily, been translated Divine-Mind, sometimes Divine Intelligence or Divine-Intellection : in the present translation it is most often conveyed by the rather clumsy term, found in practice, expressive and convenient, " The Intellectual- Principle.”

In the English, it must be noted, as in the Greek, the same term is used for the parallel Principle and Act in man : in both realms, the divine and human, the Intellectual- Principle connotes the highest really knowable : often therefore to absorb the full mystical or religious suggestion of a passage the reader will find it expedient to re-translate, i.e. to substitute temporarily for the term ‘‘ Intellectual-Principle,” the term Spirit, or despite the awkward clash, even the term " Supreme-Soul.”

With this Nous, or Divine-Mind or Divine-Intellection, or Divine-Intellectual- Principle, begins the existence of Plurality or Complexity, or Multiplicity : the Divine Mind contains, or rather is, ta Noeta=the Intellectual-Universe or Intelligible-Universe, often known as The Intelligible or The Intelligibles.

The Intellectual or Intelligible-Universe is the Totality of the Divine-Thoughts, generally known, in the phrase familiar in Platonism, as The Ideas.

The Ideas, or Divine-Thoughts, are Real-Beings, Intelligences, Powers : they are the eternal Originals, Archetypes, Intellectual-Forms of all that exists in the lower spheres. In certain aspects this sphere of the Intelligibles would be best named The Spiritual Universe : Principal Caird agrees with Whittaker in finding it closely like Dante’s conception of the circle of angels and blessed spirits gathered in contemplation and service round the throne of God.

The Intellectual or Intelligible Universe contains, or even in some sense is, all particular minds or intelligences and these in their kinds are images, representations.

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PLOTINUS

phantasms, “ shadows ” of this Universal or Divine Mind.

the throne of God.

The Intellectual or Intelligible Universe contains, or even in some sense is, all particular minds or intelligences and these in their kinds are images, representations.

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PLOTINUS

phantasms, “ shadows ” of this Universal or Divine Mind. All the phases of existence — down even to Matter, the ultimate, the lowest faintest image of Real-Being — all are “ ideally ” present from eternity in this Realm of the divine Thoughts, this Totality of the Supreme Wisdom or “ Mentation.”

The Supreme Intellectual-Principle cannot be unproductive : accompanying its Act of Thought there is what we may, coarsely, indicate as an Act of Act : the Divine-Thinking “ engenders a power apt to the realisation of its Thought,” apt that is to ‘‘ Creation ” : This engendered power is the Third Hypostasis of the Divine Triad.

3. THE ALL-SOUL

The Third Hypostasis of the Divine-Triad is, then, the All-Soul, or Universal Soul or Soul of the All : it is the eternal emanation and image of the Second Hypostasis, the Intellectual-Principle.

As the Divine-Intellectual-Principle has, to our view, two Acts — that of upward contemplation of The One and that of “ generation ” towards the lower — so the All-Soul has two Acts : it at once contemplates the Intellectual-Principle and ” generates ” in the bounty of its own perfection the lower possible. Thus we have often in the Enneads a verbal partition of the All-Soul ; we hear of the Leading-Principle of the Soul, or the Celestial Soul, concentrated in contemplation of its superior, and the Lower Soul, called also the Nature-Looking and Generative Soul, whose operation it is to generate or fashion the lower, the material Universe upon the model of the Divine-Thoughts, the " Ideas ” laid up within the Divine-Mind ; this lower principle in the Soul is sometimes called the Logos of the Universe, or the " Reason-Principle ” of the Universe. The All-Soul is the mobile cause of movement as well as of Form : more directly than the two superior or “ earlier” Hypostases of the Divine-Triad it is the eternal cause of the existence, eternal existence, of the Kosmos, or “ World,” or material, or sense-grasped Universe, which is the Soul’s Act and emanation, image and ‘‘ shadow.” It is the Creator, therefore, and the Vital-Principle of all that is lower, or “ later ” than the Divine-Triad.