The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna

this fear, in turn, becomes known in that part of the Mind which is said under such circumstances to harbour fear.

But what is the action of this fear upon the Mind ?

The general answer is that it sets up trouble and confusion before an evil anticipated. It should, however, be quite clear that the Soul or Mind is the seat of all imaginative representation — both the higher representation known as opinion or judgement and the lower representation which is not so much a judgement as a vague notion unattended by discrimination, something resembling the action by which, as is believed, the " Nature ” of common speech produces, unconsciously, the objects of the partial sphere. It is equally certain that in aU that follows upon the mental act or state, the disturbance, confined to the body, belongs to the sense-order ; trembling, pallor, inability to speak, have obviously nothing to do with the spiritual portion of the being. The Soul, in fact, would have to be described as corporeal if it were the seat of such

Ill 6.5] the impassivity of the unembodiedp. 73 symptoms : besides, in that case the trouble would not even reach the body since the only transmitting principle, oppressed by sensation, jarred out of itself, would be inhibited.

None the less, there is an affective phase of the Soul or Mind and this is not corporeal ; it can be, only, some kind of Ideal-form.

Now Matter is the one field of the desiring faculty, as of the principles of nutrition growth and engendering, which are root and spring to desire and to every other affection known to this Ideal-form. No Ideal-form can be the victim of disturbance or be in any way affected : it remains in tranquillity ; only the Matter associated with it can be affected by any state or experience induced by the movement which its mere presence suffices to set up. Thus the vegetal Principle induces vegetal life but it does not, itself, pass through the processes of vegetation ; it gives growth but it does not grow ; in no movement which it originates is it moved with the motion it induces ; it is in perfect repose, or, at least, its movement, really its act, is utterly different from what it causes elsewhere.

The nature of an Ideal-form is to be, of itself, an activity ; it operates by its mere presence : it is as if Melody itself plucked the strings.

n perfect repose, or, at least, its movement, really its act, is utterly different from what it causes elsewhere.

The nature of an Ideal-form is to be, of itself, an activity ; it operates by its mere presence : it is as if Melody itself plucked the strings. The affective phase of the Soul or Mind will be the operative cause of all affection ; it originates the movement either under the stimulus of some sense-presentment or independently — and it is a question to be examined whether the judgement leading to the movement operates from above or not — but the affective phase itself remains unmoved like Melody dictating music. The causes originating the movement may be likened to the musician ; what is moved is like the strings of his instrument, and, once more, the Melodic Principle itself is not affected, but only the strings, though, however much the musician desired it, he could not pluck the strings except under dictation from the principle of Melody.

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But why have we to call in Philosophy to make the Soul immune if it is thus (like the Melodic Principle of our illustration) immune from the beginning ?

p. 74

PLOTINUS

Because representations attack it at what we call the affective phase and cause a resulting experience, a disturbance, to which disturbance is joined the image of threatened evil : this amounts to an affection and Reason seeks to extinguish it, to ban it as destructive to the well-being of the Soul which by the mere absence of such a condition is immune, the one possible cause of affection not being present.

Take it that some such affections have engendered appearances presented before the Soul or Mind from without but taken (for practical purposes) to be actual experiences within it — then Philosophy’s task is like that of a man who wishes to throw off the shapes presented in dreams, and to this end recalls to waking condition the mind that is breeding them.

But what can be meant by the purification of a Soul that has never been stained and by the separation of the Soul from a body to which it is essentially a stranger ?

The purification of the Soul is simply to allow it to be alone ; it is pure when it keeps no company ; when it looks to nothing without itself ; when it entertains no alien thoughts — be the mode or origin of such notions or affections what they may, a subject on which we have already touched— when it no longer sees in the world of image, much less elaborates images into veritable affections.

t itself ; when it entertains no alien thoughts — be the mode or origin of such notions or affections what they may, a subject on which we have already touched— when it no longer sees in the world of image, much less elaborates images into veritable affections. Is it not a true purification to turn away towards the exact contrary of earthly things ?

Separation, in the same way, is the condition of a soul no longer entering into the body to lie at its mercy ; it is to stand as a light, set in the midst of trouble but unperturbed through all.

In the particular case of the affective phase of the Soul, purification is its awakening from the baseless visions which beset it, the refusal to see them ; its separation consists in limiting its descent towards the lower and accepting no picture thence, and of course in the banning for its part too of all which the higher Soul ignores when it has arisen from the trouble storm and is no longer bound to the flesh by the chains of sensuality and of multiplicity but has subdued to itself the body and its entire surrounding so that it holds sovereignity, tranquilly, over all.

III. 6. 6] the impassivity of the unembodied

p. 75

6.

That the Intellectual Essence, wholly of the order of Ideal-form, must be taken as impassive has been already established.

But Matter also is an incorporeal, though after a mode of its own ; we must examine, therefore, how this stands, whether it is passive, as is commonly held, a thing that can be twisted to every shape and Kind, or whether it too must be considered impassive and in what sense and fashion so. But in engaging this question and defining the nature of matter we must correct certain prevailing errors about the nature of the Authentic Existent, about Essence, about Being.

The Existent — rightly so called — is that which has authentic existence, that, therefore, which is existent completely, and therefore again, that which at no point fails in existence. Having existence perfectly, it needs nothing to preserve it in being ; it is, on the contrary, the source and cause from which all that appears to exist derives that appearance. This admitted, it must of necessity be in life, in a perfect life : if it failed it would be more nearly the non-existent than the existent. But : The Being thus indicated is Intellect, is wisdom unalloyed. It is, therefore, determined and rounded off ; it is nothing potentially that is not of the same determined order, otherwise (that is if it contained even potentially the undetermined) it would be in default.