The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna
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ivity), without which there can be no question of an Intellectual-Principle and an Intellectual Object : what is meant is not that the contemplatory Being possesses its vision as in some other principle, but that it contains the Intellectual Realm within itself.
The Intelligible Object is the Intellectual-Principle itself in its repose, unity, immobility ; the Intellectual-Principle, contemplator of that object — of the Intellectual-Principle thus in repose — is an active manifestation of the same Being, an Act which contemplates its unmoved phase and, as thus contemplating, stands as Intellectual-Principle to that of which it has the intellection : it is Intellectual- Principle in virtue of having that intellection, and at the same time is Intellectual Object, by assimilation.
This, then, is the Being which planned to create in the lower Universe what it saw existing in the Supreme, the four orders of living beings.
No doubt the passage (of the Tiniaeus) seems to imply tacitly that this planning Principle is distinct from the other two : but the three — the Essentially-Living, the Intellectual-Principle and this planning Principle — will, to others, be manifestly one : the truth is that, by a common accident, a particular trend of thought has occasioned the discrimination.
We have dealt with the first two ; but the third — this Principle which decides to work upon the objects (the Ideas) contemplated by the Intellectual-Principle within the Essentially-Living, to create them, to establish them in their partial existence — what is this third ?
It is possible that in one aspect the Intellectual-Principle is the principle of partial existence, while in another aspect it is not.
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The entities thus particularised from the unity are products of the Intellectual-Principle which thus would be, to that extent, the separating agent. On the other hand it remains in itself, indivisible ; division begins with its offspring which, of course, means with Souls : and thus a Soul — with its particular Souls — may be the separative principle.
This is what is conveyed where we are told that the separation is the work of the third Principle and begins within the Third : for to this Third belongs the discursive reasoning which is no function of the Intellectual-Principle but characteristic of its secondary, of Soul, to which precisely, divided by its own Kind, belongs the Act of division.
2.
. . .
nd begins within the Third : for to this Third belongs the discursive reasoning which is no function of the Intellectual-Principle but characteristic of its secondary, of Soul, to which precisely, divided by its own Kind, belongs the Act of division.
2.
. . . For in any one science the reduction of the total of knowledge into its separate propositions does not shatter its unity, chipping it into unrelated fragments ; in each distinct item is latent the entire body of the science, an integral thing in its highest Principle and its last detail : and similarly a man must so discipline himself that the first Principles of his Being are also his completions, are totals, that all be pointed towards the loftiest phase of the Nature : when a man has become this unity in the best, he is in that other realm ; for it is by this highest within himself, made his own, that he holds to the Supreme.
At no point did the All-Soul come into Being : it never arrived, for it never knew place ; what happens is that body, neighbouring with it, participates in it : hence Plato does not place Soul in body but body in Soul. The others, the secondary Souls, have a point of departure — they come from the AU-Soul— and they have a place into which to descend and in which to change to and fro, a place, therefore, from which to ascend : but this All-Soul is for ever Above, resting in that Being in which it holds its existence as Soul and followed, as next, by the Universe or, at least, by aU beneath the sun.
The partial Soul is illuminated by moving towards the Soul above it ; for on that path it meets Authentic Existence. Movement tow'ards the lower is towards non-Being ; and this is the step it takes when it is set on self ; for by willing towards itself it produces its lower, an
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image of itself — a noii-Being — and so is wandering, as it were, into the void, stripping itself of its own determined form. And this image, this undetermined thing, is blank darkness, for it is utterly without reason, imtouched by the Intellectual-Principle, far removed from Authentic Being.
As long as it remains at the mid-stage it is in its own peculiar region ; but when, by a sort of inferior orientation, it looks downward, it shapes that lower image and flings itself joyfully thither.
3.
(A) . . . How, then, does Unity give rise to Multiplicity ?
By its omnipresence : there is nowhere where it is not ; it occupies, therefore, all that is ; at once, it is manifold — or, rather, it is all things.
wer image and flings itself joyfully thither.
3.
(A) . . . How, then, does Unity give rise to Multiplicity ?
By its omnipresence : there is nowhere where it is not ; it occupies, therefore, all that is ; at once, it is manifold — or, rather, it is all things.
If it were simply and solely everywhere aU would be this one thing alone : but it is, also, in no place, and this gives in the final result that while all exists by means of it, in virtue of its omnipresence, ail is distinct from it in virtue of its being nowhere.
But why is it not merely present everywhere but in addition nowhere-present ?
Because, universality demands a previous unity. It must, therefore, pervade all things and make all, but not be the universe which it makes.
(B) The Soul itself must exist as Seeing — with the Intellectual- Principle as the object of its vision — it is undetermined before it sees but is naturally apt to see : in other words. Soul is Matter to (its determinant) the Intellectual-Principle.
(C) When we exercise intellection upon ourselves, we are, obviously, observing an intellective nature, for otherwise we would not be able to have that intellection.
We know, and it is ourselves that we know ; therefore we know the reality of a knowing nature : therefore, before that intellection in Act, there is another intellection, one at rest, so to speak.
Similarly, that self-intellection is an act upon a reality and upon a life ; therefore, before the Life and Real-Being concerned in the intellection there must be another Being and Life. In a word, intellection is
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vested in the activities themselves : since, then, the activities of self-intellection are intellective-forms. We, the Authentic We, are the InteUigibles and self-intellection conveys the Image of the Intellectual Sphere.
(D) The Primal is a potentiality of Movement and of Repose — and so is above and beyond both — its next subsequent has rest and movement about the Primal. Now this subsequent is the Intellectual-Principle — so characterised by having intellection of something not identical with itself whereas the Primal is without intellection. A knowing principle has duality (that entailed by being the knower of something) and, moreover, it knows itself as deficient since its virtue consists in this knowing and not in its own bare Being.