The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna

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.

(E) In the case of everything which has developed from possibility to actuality the actual is that which remains self-identical for its entire duration — and this it is which makes perfection possible even in things of the corporeal order, as for instance in fire — but the actual of this kind cannot be everlasting since (by the fact of their having once existed only in potentiality) Matter has its place in them. In anything, on the contrary, not composite (= never touched by Matter or potentiality) and possessing actuality, that actual existence is eternal. . . . There is, however, the case, also, in which a thing, itself existing in actuality, stands as potentiality to some other form of Being.

(F) . . . But the First is not to be envisaged as made up from Gods of a transcendent order : no ; the Authentic Existents constitute the Intellectual-Principle with Which motion and rest begin. The Primal touches nothing, but is the centre round which those other Beings lie in repose and in movement. For Movement is aiming, and the Primal aims at nothing ; what could the Summit aspire to ?

Has It, even, no Intellection of Itself ?

It possesses Itself and therefore is said in general terms to know itself. . . . But intellection does not mean self-ownership ; it means turning the gaze towards the Primal : now the act of intellection is itself the Primal Act, and there is therefore no place for any earlier one. The Being projecting this Act transcends the Act so that Intellection is

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DETACHED CONSIDERATIONS

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secondary to the Being in which it resides. Intellection is not the transcendently venerable thing — neither Intellection in general nor even the Intellection of The Good. Apart from and over any Intellection stands The Good itself.

The Good therefore needs no consciousness.

What sort of consciousness can be conceived in it ?

Consciousness of the Good as existent or non-existent ?

If of existent Good, that Good exists before and without any such consciousness : if the act of consciousness produces that Good, then The Good was not previously in existence — and, at once, the very consciousness falls to the ground since it is no longer consciousness of The Good.

But would not all this mean that the First does not even live ?

The First cannot be said to live since it is the source of Life.

usly in existence — and, at once, the very consciousness falls to the ground since it is no longer consciousness of The Good.

But would not all this mean that the First does not even live ?

The First cannot be said to live since it is the source of Life.

All that has self-consciousness and self-intellection is derivative ; it observes itself in order, by that activity, to become master of its Being ; and if it study itself this can mean only that ignorance inheres in it and that it is of its own nature lacking and to be made perfect by Intellection.

All thinking and knowing must, here, be eliminated : the addition introduces deprivation and deficiency.

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THE SECOND ENNEAD

FIRST TRACTATE

On the Kosmos or on the Heavenly System

I.

We hold that the ordered universe, in its material mass, has existed for ever and will for ever endure : but simply to refer this perdurance to the Will of God, however true an explanation, is utterly inadequate.

The elements of this sphere change ; the living beings of earth pass away ; only the Ideal-form (the species) persists : possibly a similar process obtains in the All.

The Will of God is able to cope with the ceaseless flux and escape of body stuff by ceaselessly reintroducing the known forms in new substances, thus ensuring perpetuity not to the particular item but to the unity of idea : now, seeing that objects of this realm possess no more than duration of form, why should celestial objects, and the celestial system itself, be distinguished by duration of the particular entity ?

Let us suppose this persistence to be the result of the all-inclusiveness of the celestial and universal — with its consequence, the absence of any outlying matter into which change could take place or which could break in and destroy.

This explanation would, no doubt, safeguard the integrity of the Whole, of the All ; but our sun and the individual being of the other heavenly bodies would not on these terms be secured in perpetuity : they are parts ; no one of them is in itself the whole, the all ; it would still be probable that theirs is no more than that duration in form which belongs to fire and such entities.

This would apply even to the entire ordered universe itself.

perpetuity : they are parts ; no one of them is in itself the whole, the all ; it would still be probable that theirs is no more than that duration in form which belongs to fire and such entities.

This would apply even to the entire ordered universe itself. For it is very possible that this too, though not in process of destruction from

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PLOTINUS

outside, might have only formal duration ; its parts may be so wearing each other down as to keep it in a continuous decay while, amid the ceaseless flux of the Kind constituting its base, an outside power ceaselessly restores the form : in this way the living All may lie under the same conditions as man and horse and the rest — man and horse persisting but not the individual of the type.

With this, we would have no longer the distinction of one order, the heavenly system, stable for ever, and another, the earthly, in process of decay : all would be alike except in the point of time ; the celestial would merely be longer lasting. If, then, we accepted this duration of type alone as a true account of the All equally with its partial members, our difficulties would be eased — or indeed we should have no further problem — once the Will of God were shown to be capable, under these conditions and by such communication, of sustaining the Universe.

But if we are obliged to allow individual persistence to any definite entity within the Kosmos then, firstly, we must show that the Divine Will is adequate to make it so ; secondly, we have to face the question, Wdiat accounts for some things having individual persistence and others only the persistence of type ? and, thirdly, we ask how the partial entities of the celestial system hold a real duration which would thus appear possible to all partial things.

2.

Supposing we accept this view and hold that, while things below the moon’s orb have merely type-persistence, the celestial realm and all its several members possess individual eternity ; it remains to show how this strict permanence of the individual identity — the actual item eternally unchangeable — can belong to what is certainly corporeal, seeing that bodily substance is characteristically a thing of flux.

The theory of bodily flux is held by Plato no less than by the other philosophers who have dealt with physical matters, and is applied not only to ordinary bodies but to those, also, of the heavenly sphere.

“ How,” he asks, “ can these corporeal and visible entities continue eternally unchanged in identity ? ” — evidently agreeing, in this matter

II.