The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna

ach member has its own function, the nobler organ the higher activity while others successively concern the lower degrees of the life, each part acting of itself, and experiencing what belongs to its own nature and what comes from its relation with every other. Strike, and what is designed for utterance gives forth the appropriate volume of sound while other parts take the blow in silence

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PLOTINUS

but react in their own especial movement ; the total of all the utterance and action and receptivity constitutes what we may call the personal voice, life and history of the living form. The parts, distinct in Kind, have distinct functions : the feet have their work and the eyes theirs ; the understanding serves to one end, the Intellectual Principle to another.

But all sums to a unity, a comprehensive Providence. From the inferior grade downwards is Fate ; the upper is Providence alone : for in the Intellectual Kosmos all is Reason-Principle or its Priors — Divine Mind and unmingled Soul — and immediately upon these follows Providence which rises from Divine Mind, is the content of the Unmingled Soul, and, through this Soul, is communicated to the Sphere of living things.

This Reason-Principle comes as a thing of unequal parts, and therefore its creations are imequal, as, for example, the several members of one Living Being. But after this allotment of rank and function, all act consonant with the will of the gods keeps the sequence and is included under the providential government, for the Reason-Principle of providence is god-serving.

All such right-doing, then, is linked to Providence ; but it is not therefore performed by it : men or other agents, living or hfeless, are causes of certain things happening, and any good that may result is taken up again by Providence. In the total, then, the right rules and what has happened amiss is transformed and corrected. Thus, to take an example from a single body, the Providence of a living organism implies its health ; let it be gashed or otherwise wounded, and that Reason-Principle which governs it sets to work to draw it together, knit it anew, heal it, and put the affected part to rights.

In sum, evil belongs to the sequence of things, but it comes (not from Providence but) from necessity.

otherwise wounded, and that Reason-Principle which governs it sets to work to draw it together, knit it anew, heal it, and put the affected part to rights.

In sum, evil belongs to the sequence of things, but it comes (not from Providence but) from necessity. It originates in ourselves ; it has its causes no doubt, but we are not, therefore, forced to it by Providence : some of these causes we adapt to the operation of Providence and of its subordinates, but with others we fail to make the connection ; the act instead of being ranged under the will of Providence consults the desire of the agent alone or of some other element in the Universe, something

III. 3-6]

PROVIDENCE

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which is either itself at variance with Providence or has set up some such state of variance in ourselves.

The one circumstance does not produce the same result wherever it acts ; the normal operation will be modified from case to case : Helen’s beauty told very differently on Paris and on Idomeneus ; bring together two handsome people of loose character and two living honourably and the resulting conduct is very different ; a good man meeting a libertine exhibits a distinct phase of his nature and, similarly, the dissolute answer to the society of their betters.

The act of the libertine is not done by Providence or in accordance with Providence ; neither is the action of the good done by Providence — it is done by the man — but it is done in accordance with Providence, for it is an act consonant with the Reason-Principle. Thus a patient following his treatment is himself an agent and yet is acting in accordance with the doctor’s method inspired by the art concerned with the causes of health and sickness ; what one does against the laws of health is one’s act, but an act conflicting with the Providence of medicine.

6.

But, if all this be true, how can evil fall within the scope of seership ? The predictions of the seers are based on observation of the Universal Circuit : how can this indicate the evil with the good ?

Clearly the reason is that all contraries coalesce. Take, for example.
Shape and (its contrary) Matter : the living being (of the lower order)
is a coalescence of these two ; so that to be aware of the Shape and the
Reason-Principle is to be aware of the Matter on which the Shape has
been imposed.

The living-being of the compound order is not present (as pure and simple Idea) like the living being of the Intellectual order : in the compound entity, we are aware, at once, of the Reason-Principle and of the inferior element brought under form.

imposed.

The living-being of the compound order is not present (as pure and simple Idea) like the living being of the Intellectual order : in the compound entity, we are aware, at once, of the Reason-Principle and of the inferior element brought under form. Now the Universe is such a compound living thing : to observe, therefore, its content is to be aware not less of its lower elements than of the Providence which operates within it.

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PLOTINUS

This Providence reaches to all that comes into being ; its scope therefore includes living things with their actions and states, the total of their history at once overruled by the Reason- Principle and yet subject in some degree to Necessity.

These, then, are presented as mingled both by their initial nature and by the continuous process of their existence ; and the Seer is not able to make a perfect discrimination setting on the one side Providence with all that happens under Providence and on the other side what the substrate communicates to its product. Such discrimination is not for a man, not for a wise man or a divine man : one may say it is the prerogative of a god. Not causes but facts lie in the Seer’s province ; his art is the reading of the scriptures of Nature which tell of the ordered and never condescend to the disorderly ; the movement of the Universe utters its testimony to him and, before men and things reveal themselves, brings to light what severally and collectively they are.

Here conspires with There and There with Here, elaborating together the consistency and eternity of a Kosmos and by their correspondences revealing the sequence of things to the trained observer — for every form of divination turns upon correspondences. Universal interdependence, there could not be, but universal resemblance there must. This probably is the meaning of the saying that Correspondences maintain the Universe.

This is a correspondence of inferior with inferior, of superior with superior, eye with eye, foot with foot, everything with its fellow and, in another order, virtue with right action and vice with unrighteousness. Admit such correspondence in the All and we have the possibility of prediction. If the one order acts on the other, the relation is not that of maker to thing made — the two are coeval — it is the interplay of members of one living being ; each in its own place and way moves as its own nature demands ; to every organ its grade and task, and to every grade and task its effective organ.

7-

And since the higher exists, there must be the lower as well.