Select Works of Plotinus — trans. Thomas Taylor

however, in soul is something of a vigilant nature, and this is also the case with that which tends from it to another thing.

Hence, it causes other things to live which do not live from themselves, and confers on them such a life as it lives itself. The life of soul, therefore, being essentialized in reason, imparts reason to body, as an image of that which it possesses itself. For that which it imparts to body is an image of life. Body, also, receives from soul corporeal morphcz , of which soul contains the productive principles. Soul, likewise, comprehends in itself the productive principles of Gods/ and of all things. Hence, the world also contains all things in itself.

XI. Those ancient wise men, likewise, who wishing that the Gods should be present with them, fabricated temples and statues, appear to me to have directed their attention to the nature of the universe, and to have intellectually perceived, that the nature of soul is every where tractable ; and that it may be received the most easily of all things, if any thing is fashioned so as to be passive to it, and is able to receive a certain portion of it. But i. e. Of divine souls, each of which is a God according to participation. See the first book of my translation of Pro cl us On the Theology of Plato.

every thing is disposed to be passive which is in any way imitative, so as to be able like a mirror to seize a certain form. For the nature of the uni¬ verse has fashioned all things most artificially in imitation of those forms the participations of which it contains in itself. And since every thing is thus generated, the reason [or productive principle] in matter, which was fashioned according to a reason prior to matter, is conjoined to that God, con¬ formably to whom it was generated, and which the soul looks to, and possesses while it fabricates. Hence it was not possible for any thing to be gene¬ rated destitute of this God ; nor again , is it possi¬ ble for him t& descend hither; since this God is intellect, the sun of the intellectual world. Let this, therefore, be assumed by us as the paradigm of reason. But next to this soul follows, suspended from permanently abiding intellect, and being also itself permanent. Soul, therefore, imparts the ter¬ minations of itself which are prior to this visible sun, to this sun ; and causes it through itself as a medium to be conjoined to intellect, becoming as it were an interpreter of the things derived from in¬ tellect to the sun, and also of those which revert from the sun to intellect, so far as the former 2sun, to this sun ; and causes it through itself as a medium to be conjoined to intellect, becoming as it were an interpreter of the things derived from in¬ tellect to the sun, and also of those which revert from the sun to intellect, so far as the former recurs

^49 through soul to the latter. For no one thing is very remote from another ; and yet again, it is re^ mote through difference and mixture. But every thing [in the intellectual region] is in itself, not locally, and each is united to each, and is at the same time separate from each. These, however, [i. e. the mundane spheres] are Gods, because they are never deserted by intellect and soul ; and are suspended from the primordial soul, which is as it were departing [from mundane natures]. These, therefore, so far as they are what they are, and so far as they are said to look to intellect [are divine] ; the vision of soul itself being directed no where else than to intellect.1

XII. The souls of men, however, beholding the images of themselves, like that of Bacchus in a mirror,* were from thence impelled to descend i

1 The latter part of this sentence in the original is as fol¬ lows ; ovhafiov ψυχής αυτής η σώματος €Κ€ΐ βΧεπονσης ; but both the sense and the version of Ficinus require that the word σώματος should be expunged.

% The meaning of what is here said by Plotinus, will be illustrated by the following remarkable passage from the MS* Commentary of Olympiodorus On the Phaedo. “ In order, ’* (says he) “ to the soul's descent, it is necessary that she shouldp. 350 yet were not cut off from their principle and from intellect. For they did not descend in conjunction with intellect, but proceeded as far as to the earth, their heads being at the same time established above the heavens. It happened, however* that their descent was more extended, because that which subsists in them as a medium, is compelled to exercise a guardian care, in consequence of the first establish an image of herself in the body ; and in the second place, that she should sympathize with the image according to a similitude of form. For every form hastens into a sameness with itself, through an innate convergency to itself. In the third place, becoming situated in a divisible nature, it is necessary that she should be lacerated and scat¬ tered together with such a nature, and that she should fall into an ultimate distribution, till through a cathartic life, she raises herself from the extreme dispersion, loosens the bond of sym¬ pathy through which she is united to the body, and energizing without the image, 3with such a nature, and that she should fall into an ultimate distribution, till through a cathartic life, she raises herself from the extreme dispersion, loosens the bond of sym¬ pathy through which she is united to the body, and energizing without the image, becomes established according to her pri¬ mary life. And we may behold a resemblance of all this, in the fable respecting Bacchus the paradigm of our intellect. For it is said that Dionysius, establishing his image in a mirror, pursued it, and thus became distributed into the universe. But Apollo excited and elevated Bacchus, this God being a cathartic deity, and the true saviour of Dionysius. And on this account he is celebrated as Dionysoter. (διοννσωτηρ, for so it is requisite to read, and not δίονυσοπ?*.)” See more on this subject in the second edition of my treatise, On the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, in Number l6 of the Pam¬ phleteer, for Nov. 1816.

nature into which it arrives requiring solicitous attention. But the father Jupiter, commiserating laborious souls, made the bonds about which they labour mortal, causing them to have periodical ces¬ sations of their toil, and a liberation from body, that they also may become situated there where the soul of the universe always resides, without any conversion to these inferior realms. For what the world now possesses is sufficient to it, and will be perpetually through all the following revolutions and periodic restitutions of time, and this esta¬ blished in measures of definite lives, in which these are led to an harmonious agreement with those. At the same time, likewise, all things are arranged by one reason, with reference to die ascent and descent of souls, and every other particular. The symphony , however , of souls with the order of the universe , which nevertheless are not suspended from the universe , hut co-adapt themselves in their de¬ scent, and make one concord with the mundane cir¬ culation , is testified by this , that their fortunes , lives, and deliberate elections , are signified by the figures of the stars . That the universe, likewise, utters as it were one voice harmonically and aptly,p. 352 is asserted by the ancients more than any thing else, though obscurely. But this would not be the case, unless the universe was both active and pas¬ sive through its participation of intellectual forms, in the measures of its periods, orders, and lives ; souls evolving themselves according to the genera of discursive progressions, at one time in the intel¬ ligible world, at another in the heavens, and at another being converted to these