The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna
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power, and possessing no phase of the Authentic Existents, not even in possession of its own falsity — lacks the very means of manifesting itself, utter void as it is ; it becomes the means by which other things appear, but it cannot announce its own presence. Penetrating thought may arrive at it, discriminating it from Authentic Existence ; then, it is discerned as something abandoned by all that really is, by even the dimmest semblants of being, as a thing dragged towards every shape and property and appearing to follow — yet in fact not even following.
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An Ideal-Principle approaches and leads Matter towards some desired dimension, investing this non-existent underlie with a magnitude from itself which never becomes incorporate — for Matter, if it really incorporated magnitude, would be a mass.
Eliminate this Ideal-Form and the substratum ceases to be a thing of magnitude, or to appear so ; the mass produced by the Idea was, let us suppose, a man or a horse ; the horse-magnitude came upon the Matter when a horse was produced upon it ; when the horse ceases to exist upon the Matter, the magnitude of the horse departs also. If we are told that the horse implies a certain determined bulk and that thisIII. 6. 17] THE IMPASSIVITY OF THE UNEMBODIEDp. 91 bulk is a permanent thing, we answer that what is permanent in this case is not the magnitude of the horse but the magnitude of mass in general. That same Magnitude might be fire or earth ; on their disappearance their particular magnitudes would disappear with them. Matter, then, can never take to itself either pattern or magnitude ; if it did, it would no longer be able to turn from being fire, let us say, into being something else ; it would become and be fire once for all.
In a word, though Matter is far extended — so vastly as to appear co-extensive with all this sense-known Universe — yet if the Heavens and their content came to an end, all magnitude would simultaneously pass from Matter with, beyond a doubt, all its other properties ; it would be abandoned to its own Kind, retaining nothing of all that which, in its own peculiar mode, it had hitherto exhibited.
Where an entrant force can effect modification it will inevitably leave some trace upon its withdrawal ; but where there can be no modification, nothing can be retained ; light comes and goes, and the air is as it always was.
mode, it had hitherto exhibited.
Where an entrant force can effect modification it will inevitably leave some trace upon its withdrawal ; but where there can be no modification, nothing can be retained ; light comes and goes, and the air is as it always was.
That a thing essentially devoid of magnitude should come to a certain size is no more astonishing than that a thing essentially devoid of heat should become warm : Matter’s essential existence is quite separate from its existing in bulk, since, of course, magnitude is an immaterial principle as pattern is. Besides, if we are not to reduce Matter to nothing, it must be all things by way of participation, and Magnitude is one of those all things.
In bodies, necessarily compounds. Magnitude — though not a determined Magnitude — must be present as one of the constituents ; it is implied in the very notion of body ; but Matter— not a Body — excludes even undetermined Magnitude.
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Nor can we, on the other hand, think that matter is simply Absolute
Magnitude.
Magnitude is not, like Matter, a receptacle ; it is an Ideal-Principle :
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PLOTINUS
it is a thing standing apart to itself, not some definite Mass. The fact is that the self-gathered content of the Intellectual Principle or of the All-Soul, desires expansion (and thereby engenders secondaries) : in its images — aspiring and moving towards it and eagerly imitating its act — is vested a similar power of reproducing their states in their own derivatives. The Magnitude latent in the expansive tendency of the Imagemaking phase (of Intellect or AU-Soul) runs forth into the Absolute Magnitude of the Universe ; this in turn enlists into the process the spurious magnitude of Matter : the content of the Supreme, thus, in virtue of its own prior extension enables Matter— which never possesses a content— to exhibit the appearance of Magnitude. It must be understood that spurious Magnitude consists in the fact that a thing (Matter) not possessing actual Magnitude strains towards it and has the extension of that straining. All that is Real Being gives forth a reflection of itself upon all else ; every Reality, therefore, has Magnitude which by this process is communicated to the Universe.
The Magnitude inherent in each Ideal-Principle — that of a horse or of anything else — combines with Magnitude the Absolute with the result that, irradiated by that Absolute, Matter entire takes Magnitude and every particle of it becomes a mass ; in this way, by virtue at once of the totality of Idea with its inherent magnitude and of each several specific Idea, all things appear under mass result that, irradiated by that Absolute, Matter entire takes Magnitude and every particle of it becomes a mass ; in this way, by virtue at once of the totality of Idea with its inherent magnitude and of each several specific Idea, all things appear under mass ; Matter takes on what we conceive as extension ; it is compelled to assume a relation to the All and, gathered under this Idea and under Mass, to be all things — in the degree in which the operating power can lead the really nothing to become all.
By the conditions of Manifestation, colour rises from non-colour (=from the colourless prototype of colour in the Ideal Realm). Quality, known by the one name with its parallel in the sphere of Primals, rises, similarly, from non-quality : in precisely the same mode, the Magnitude appearing upon Matter rises from non-Magnitude or from that Primal which is known to us by the same name ; so that material things become visible through standing midway between bare underlie and Pure Idea. All is perceptible by virtue of this origin in the Intellectual Sphere but
I1I.6. i8] the impassivity of the unembodied 93 all is falsity since the base in which the manifestation takes place is a non-existent.
Particular entities thus attain their Magnitude through being drawn out by the power of the Existents which mirror themselves and make space for themselves in them. And no violence is required to draw them into all the diversity of Shapes and Kinds because the phenomenal All exists by Matter (by Matter’s essential all-receptivity) and because each several Idea, moreover, draws Matter its own way by the power stored within itself, the power it holds from the Intellectual Realm. Matter is manifested in this sphere as Mass by the fact that it mirrors the Absolute Magnitude ; Magnitude here is the reflection in the mirror. The Ideas meet all of necessity in Matter (the Ultimate of the emanatory progress) ; and Matter, both as one total thing and in its entire scope, must submit itself, since (by definition) it is the Material of the entire Here, not of any one determined thing ; what is, in its own character, no determined thing may become determined by an outside force — though, in becoming thus determined, it does not become the definite thing in question, for thus it would lose its own characteristic indetermination.
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