The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna

of the lower derives from its prior and the entire lower uni.erse derives from The First, but through the mediation of the Intellectual-Principle and the Soul.

The Intellectual-Principle has its intellection by virtue of the self-contemplation of the One : —

V. I, 7. " We say the Intellectual-Principle is the image of The One. . . . But

The One is not an Intellectual-Principle, how then does it engender an Intellectual- Principle ? The answer is that The One has Vision and this very Vision actually is the Intellectual-Principle.”

The Soul is twofold in Act ; standing between Divine Mind and Nature, it looks to both, as is indicated in the quotation from IV. 8, 3, page 139.

So, too ; —

IV. 8, 5. “ For every soul has something of the lower for the purposes of body and of the higher for the purposes of Divine Mind.”

All existents are brought back, by these channels of mediation, to the First Principle. See I. 7, 2, page 90.

IV. 3, 12. ” The Intellectual-Principle entire rests ever Above but sends down to the sense-known world through the Soul which in turn gives out to its own next.”

W. 5, 9. ” All through the scheme of things, lowers are included under what is one degree less low, and highers under the higher yet ; one thing under another, until the First is reached ; this First, having nothing before It, can be overpassed by nothing . . . must therefore overpass all.”

Thus all follow the same line, up and down, and for their ultimate Principle all depend upon The One, which for this reason alone is called The Good : —

I. 7, I. ” The Absolute Good must be described as That to Which all things aspire and It to none.”

Compare I. 8, 2, page 93.

As to the mode in which The One or The Good is present to all and all exist and have their substantial being in It, this is conveyed, after Plotinus’ manner, by many images and metaphors. One of these illustrations makes it, so to speak, a universal Life ; —

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PLOTINUS

VI. 5, 12. “ It is present as one Life : in a living organism the life is not seated at one point ... it is diffused throughout the entire frame. If this seems impossible, remember that the Divine Energy knows no bound of quantity ; divide it mentally for ever and It is still the same ; It is fundamentally infinite ; it has no touch of Matter about It so as to vary according to the magnitude of the object upon which It acts.”

VIII

The Soul and the World of Nature

IV. 4, 13.

ity ; divide it mentally for ever and It is still the same ; It is fundamentally infinite ; it has no touch of Matter about It so as to vary according to the magnitude of the object upon which It acts.”

VIII

The Soul and the World of Nature

IV. 4, 13. How does this Wisdom (n) differ from what we know as Nature ?

The distinction is that the Wisdom is an earlier, a more divine form of the Soul ; for Nature, too, is an image of the Divine Wisdom, but, as the last emanation of the Soul, possesses only the lowest degree of the Reason illuminating it. . . . Nature, then, has not consciousness (n) : it has merely productivity which consists in its transmitting, without choice or knowledge, to what follows upon itself, to the body-kinds and Matter-kinds, the Form which it has received from Soul.

III. 2, 2. From that Divine Kosmos, authentic and One, this lower Kosmos derives its existence : it is not a true Unity ; it is manifold, subdivided into multiplicity, thing standing apart from thing in spatial differentiation ; discord takes the place of harmony ; where all is something less than perfect, item clashes with item ; no member suffices to itself ; each to complete its own fimction demands the aid of another and so there is general strife.

This lower Kosmos has been engendered not because the Divinity saw need for it, but from the sheer necessity there was for a secondary or derivative kind, since it was not in the constitution of existence that The Divine should be the latest and lowest of things.

The Divine is The First ; it possessed, also, a multiform power, an all-power, fitted to produce other forms of being ; but Its action could not be the result of seeking and planning ; if there were planning. It would not possess the Kosmos as something quite Its own, something emanating from Its own Essence : It would be like a craftsman in whom creation is not an inborn personal power but an acquirement, as of a trade learned. But the Universe is the work of the undisturbed, unmoved Divine Mind giving something from Itself to Matter (n) : this Gift is the Reason-Principle which flows from It.

THE SOUL AS IN NATURE

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Notes

“ This Wisdom ” is that Soul which verges on The Intellectual-Principle, that is the superior Soul above that which deals directly with Nature and with bodily forms : —

III. 8, 4. " What we call Nature is a Soul, the offspring of a prior Soul, of a

Soul living with more power.”

This prior Soul is compared elsewhere to the Celestial Aphrodite, the inferior Soul, that which is Nature, to the Earthly Aphrodite.

odily forms : —

III. 8, 4. " What we call Nature is a Soul, the offspring of a prior Soul, of a

Soul living with more power.”

This prior Soul is compared elsewhere to the Celestial Aphrodite, the inferior Soul, that which is Nature, to the Earthly Aphrodite. This inferior or later soul is described as bringing Nature into being by the process by which Contemplation or Mental Purposing passes into action.

In other places Sensation in animals and the principle of growth in plants are said to be produced by an outwending or procession of the Soul : —

V. 2, I. " The Soul, as looking to the Divine order, is perfect ; going outside of itself into a movement foreign to its essence, it engenders an image which is sensitive and vegetative Nature.”

Speaking rather loosely Plotinus says, IV. 9, 4, that the multiplicity of Souls all proceed from the one Soul-of-the-All : in IV. 8, 4 we have the conception, truer to the system, that they are, rather, a multiplicity within the one Soul.

” Something of Itself to Matter ” : — VI. 4, 16. ” This is no coming-down as into a place ; the Soul’s Descent consists in its being with body ; when we say that the Soul is in the body, we mean that it communicates something of its own to the body.”

The Soul " entering ” the multiplicity of the sense-known world suffers, as it were, a loss of its unity, a part, a lower part, visiting the lower sphere : —

II. 9, 2. ” The less exalted part of the Soul is dragged down . . . the eternal law could never allow it to descend entire.”

In joining the body it loses something of its liberty, for in all that it now does, even though the life be mainly lived in Reason, there is a certain admixture : —

VI. 8, 2. ” All that has to do with action, even where Reason rules, is of mixed quality, and entire freedom cannot exist.”

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PLOTINUS

IX

Matter

I. 8, 7. “ But why does the existence . . . necessity of Evil ” (pages 100- loi).

Note

Plotinus goes much further than Plato in the low rank accorded to Matter. In the Enneads it is the sheer terminus of the Truly-Existent and of The Good ; it is that which has nothing of reality or of value. Sometimes, however, like Plato, Plotinus makes Matter “ The Other-than-Being ” : cf. I. 8, 3, and I. 8, 5, pages 94, 97 of this volume.

III. 6, 7. “ Matter is without body ; body is of earlier date (less distant from the Divine) and merely includes Matter . . .