The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna

lank spaces here and there ; the actors are to be something else as well ; they become parts of the poet, who on his side has a fore-knowledge of the word they will add, and so is able to bind into one story what the actors bring in and what is to follow.

For, in the All, the sequences, including what follows upon wickedness, become Reason-Principles, and therefore in right reason. Thus : from adultery and the violation of prisoners the process of nature will produce fine children, to grow, perhaps, into fine men ; and where wicked violence has destroyed cities, other and nobler cities may rise in their place.

But does not this make it absurd to introduce Souls as responsible causes, some acting for good and some for evil ? If we thus exonerate the Recison-Principle from any part in wickedness do we not also cancel its credit for the good ? Why not simply take the doings of these actors (in the universal drama) for representative parts of the Reason-Principle as the doings of stage-actors are representative parts of the stage-drama ? Why not admit that the Reason-Principle itself includes evil action as

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PLOTINUS

much as good action, and inspires the precise conduct of all its representatives ? Would not this be all the more plausible in that the universal drama is the completer creation and that the Reason-Principle is the source of all that exists ?

But this raises the question, What motive could lead the Logos to produce evil ?

The explanation, also, would take away all power in the Universe from Souls, even those nearest to the divine ; they would all be mere parts of a Reason-Principle.

And, further — unless all Reason-Principles are Souls — why should some be souls and others exclusively Reason-Principles when the All is itself a Soul ?

THIRD TRACTATE
On Providence : Second Treatise

I.

What is our answer ?

All events and things, good and evil alike, are included under the Universal Reason-Principle of which they are parts— strictly “ included ” for this Universal Idea does not engender them but encompasses them.

The Reason-Principles are acts or expressions of a Universal Soul ; its parts (i.e. events good and evil) are expressions of these Soul-parts.

This unity. Soul, has different parts ; the Reason-Principles, correspondingly, will also have their parts, and so, too, will the ultimates of the system, all that they bring into being.

The Souls are in harmony with each other and so, too, are their acts and effects ; but it is harmony in the sense of a resultant unity built out of contraries.

have their parts, and so, too, will the ultimates of the system, all that they bring into being.

The Souls are in harmony with each other and so, too, are their acts and effects ; but it is harmony in the sense of a resultant unity built out of contraries. All things, as they rise from a unity, come back to unity by a sheer need of nature ; differences unfold themselves, contraries are produced, but aU is drawn into one organised system by the unity at the source.

The principle may be illustrated from the different classes of animal

III. 3. 2]

PROVIDENCE

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life : there is one genus, horse, though horses among themselves fight and bite and show malice and angry envy : so all the others within the unity of their Kind ; and so humanity.

AU these types, again, can be ranged under the one Kind, that of living things ; objects without life can be thought of under their specific types and then be resumed under the one Kind of the “ non-living ” ; if we choose to go further yet, living and non-living may be included under the one Kind, “ Beings,” and, further still, under the Source of Being.

Having attached all to this source, we turn to move down again in continuous division : we see the Unity fissuring, as it reaches out into Universality, and yet embracing all in one system so that with all its differentiation it is one multiple living thing — an organism in which each member executes the function of its own nature while it stiU has its being in that One Whole ; fire bums ; horse does horse work ; men give, each the appropriate act of the peculiar personal quality — and upon the several particular Kinds to which each belongs follow the acts, and the good or evil of the life.

2.

Circumstances are not sovereign over the good of life, for they are themselves moulded by their priors and come in as members of a sequence. The Leading-Principle holds aU the threads while the minor agents, the individuals, serve according to their own capacities, as in a war the generalissimo lays down the plan and his subordinates do their best to its furtherance. The Universe has been ordered by a Providence that may be compared to a general ; he has considered operations, conditions and such practical needs as food and drink, arms and engines of war ; aU the problem of reconciling these complex elements has been worked out beforehand so as to make it probable that the final event may be success.

l ; he has considered operations, conditions and such practical needs as food and drink, arms and engines of war ; aU the problem of reconciling these complex elements has been worked out beforehand so as to make it probable that the final event may be success. The entire scheme emerges from the general’s mind with a certain plausible promise, though it cannot cover the enemy’s operations, and there is no power over the disposition of the enemy’s forces ; but where the mighty general is in question whose power extends over all that is, what can pass unordered, what can fail to fit into the plan ?

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3-

PLOTINUS

For, even though the I is sovereign in choosing, yet by the fact of the choice the thing done takes its place in the ordered total. Your personahty does not come from outside into the universal scheme ; you are a part of it, you and your personal disposition.

But what is the cause of this initial personality ?

This question resolves itself into two : are we to make the Creator, if Creator there is, the cause of the moral quality of the individual or does the responsibility lie with the creature ?

Or is there, perhaps, no responsibility ? After all, none is charged in the case of plants brought into being without the perceptive faculties ; no one is blamed because animals are not aU that men are— which would be hke complaining that men are not all that gods are. Reason acquits plant and animal and, their maker ; how can it complain because men do not stand above humanity ?

If the reproach simply means that Man might improve by bringing from his own stock something towards his betterment we must allow that the man failing in this is answerable for his own inferiority : but if the betterment must come not from within the man but from without, from his Author, it is foUy to ask more than has been given, as foolish in the case of man as in plant and animal.

The question is not whether a thing is inferior to something else but whether in its own Kind it suffices to its own part ; universal equality there cannot be.

Then the Reason-Principle has measured things out with the set purpose of inequality ?

Certainly not : the inequality is inevitable by the nature of things : the Reason-Principle of this Universe follows upon a phase of the Soul ; the Soul itself follows upon an Intellectual Principle, and this Intellectual Principle is not one among the things of the Universe but is all things ; in aU things, there is implied variety of things ; where there is variety and not identity there must be primals, secondaries, tertiaries and