tion : we come now to the Soul which is prior to Nature and say that by the Soul’s Contemplation — its zest for knowledge, its desire for experience, the birth-pangs induced in it by what it knows, its teeming plenty — the Soul, itself a Contempla- tion entire, has begotten another Contemplation ... a weaker than itself.”
The Beginning of Multiplicity
V. I, 5. This God (The Intellectual-Principle), already a Being of Multiplicity, is present in the soul. . . . But what is the God that has thus engendered ; what is the Simplex, existing before all such Multiplicity, the source at once of its exist- ence and of its Multiplicity, the source of Number itself ? For Number is not primal ; before the Two, there is the One (n) and the Unit must precede the Dyad : coming later than the One, the Dyad has the One as the standard of its differentia- tion, that without which it could not be the separate differentiated thing it is. And as soon as there is differentiation, number exists.
Notes
The need for a Principle above the Intellectual-Principle is established by the con- sideration that Divine Mind is, and contains, a Multiplicity : it is both Intellection and Existence and includes the Multiplicity of the Divine Thoughts, the Ideas ; its Multiplicity demands a Unity to include or contain it.
III. 8, 8. ” The Intellectual-Principle, thus, contains the Multiple : therefore
it is not the First : there must be a Principle transcending t. . . . Multiplicity is subsequent to Unity and the Intellectual-Principle is number : the Source of this number is the One ; Divine Mind, as being both the Intellectual-Principle and the Intellectual-Kosmos is twofold : as long as we have duality, we must go still higher until we reach what transcends the Dyad.”
From this it follows that nothing can be attributed to The One but what is purely Itself : if It possessed or included anything other than Itself, the One would be, again, a Multiplicity : —
V. 4, I. ” Standing transcendent above all things that follow It, existing in Itself, not mixing or to be mixed with any emanation from Itself, veritably The One, not merely possessing Oneness as an attribute of Its essence — for that would
The All-Transcending Unity
be a false Oneness — a Principle overpassing all reasoning, all knowing ... a Principle standing over all Essence and Existence . . . only when it is simplex and First, apart from all, can It be perfectly self-sufficing : a non-primal needs its prior and a non-simplex demands the simplex which is its source.”
VI. 9, 6. ” All that is multiple, and not One, is needy ; made up of many
elements, it craves the Unity ; the Unity itself cannot crave the Unity which it is.”
Another consideration is that unless there were a Unity there could be nothing else : things are by the virtue of a Unity : —
VI. 9, I. " All beings exist by the One — and this whether their being is primal or merely partial. . . . Take away their Unity and they lose their Being.” Plotinus goes on to instance an army, a choir, a herd, a house, a ship, planets, animals, a man : a principle of Unity makes them what they are, and this principle in them is an image, a distant reflection, of the Unity that is the essence of the all-trans- cending One.”
Still, in a certain mode. Multiplicity may be affirmed of The One — in that it possesses infinite power : —
VI. 9, 6. “ The One must be taken to be infinite not in the sense of some
mass or number never to be measured or traversed, but in the sense of inconceivable power.” And see, later, on Extract VII, page 144.
The Absolute Transcendence of The One
VI. 9, 3. Since the Nature or Hypostasis of The One is the engenderer of the All, It can Itself be none of the things in the All ; that is It is not a thing ; it does not possess quality or quantity ; It is not an Intellectual-Principle, not a Soul ; It is not in motion and not at rest ; not in space, not in time ; It is essentially of a unique form or rather of no-form, since it is prior to form as It is prior to movement and to rest : all these categories hold only in the realm of Existence and constitute the Multiplicity characteristic of that lower realm.
Note
The One can be indicated only in negations : —
VI. 8, II. ” How can we make such a statement about It, seeing that all else we say of it is said by negation ? ”
No attribute can be affirmed of It : we penetrate to It only by mystic con- templation, the senses sealed : —
See I. 6, 8. Page 88 of this work.
The One is without thought but also without ignorance ; —
VI. g, 6. " That It neither knows nor has Intellection of Itself does not con-
stitute any ignorance in It. Ignorance implies something outside the ignorer . . . but what stands absolutely alone neither knows anything nor has anything to ignore ; being one and always present to itself it has no need of self-knowing ; in fact, even that self-presence ought not to be attributed to It if we are to preserve Its unity ; we must rule out all knowing and all consciousness whether of Itself or of aught else ; we must conceive It not as having Intellection but as being the object of Intellection (object to the knowing of the Divine Mind).
Hence it follows that The One is not intelligible in Itself but only to the Divine Intellectual-Principle : —
V, 6, 2. “ In regard to the Intellectual-Principle The One will be Intelligible,
an object of true-knowing, but within Itself It will strictly neither possess Intellec- tion nor be the object of Intellection.”
The One does not even possess will ; if Plotinus, after Plato, names It The Good, even this must be understood in a modified sense : —
VI. 9, 6. ” All that can be said to lack or desire, lacks or desires the Good
that will complete it : The One, therefore, can experience no Good nor any will to Good ; It is the Beyond-Good, or It is good, not in regard to Itself, but in regard to the lower that is capable of partaking in it.”
Similarly if It is called the Source and the Cause, this is not a definition of The One as It is in Itself but the statement of a relation in which the lower stands to It : —
VI. 8, 8. “ All things, however exalted, august, are later than This : It is the
source of all, though in some sense It is no source : we must keep all things apart from It . . . even freedom of action. ... It can enter into no relation with the realm of Existence.”
VI. g, 3. ” When we call it a Cause we are not making an assertion about It
but about ourselves ; we speak of what w'e derive from It while It remains stead- fastly within Itself.”
Plotinus is insistent that this name, The One, is a poor shift towards indicating a Nature which can never be expressed, of which no knowledge is possible : —
VI. 9, 5. ” This Wonder, this One, to which in verity no name may be given
. . . but since we must treat of It we may thus name It, but on condition of bearing in mind the special sense and guarding against confusing It with any form that may be suggested by the numerical designation.”
V. 3, 13. “ Hence It can not be truly designated ; any name employed makes
It some thing ; but That which is above all things — above that most august of
The Supreme a Triad
Existents, the Intellectual-Principle — This alone of all is authentic ; It is no thing among things ; It is nameless, for It falls under no class ; we can attempt no more than to use words which will in some helpful way indicate It for the purposes of discussion.”
VI. 8, 8. “ Language fails even for the adequate discussion of the Trans-
cendent, much more for defining it.”
Why The Supreme is a Triad
II. 9, I. ... It follows that we need have recourse to no other Principles than these Three : we have first The One, then, following upon The One, the Divine Mind and the Primal Intellectual-Principle ; after this, the Soul. This is the order ruling in the nature of things and we may not assign either fewer or more Principles than these to the Supreme. If we affirm less than Three, we must bring together either Soul and Intellectual-Principle or Intellectual-Principle and The First : but we have abundantly shown that these are separate. It remains, then, to consider whether there can be more than Three.
Now what Divine Hypostasis could exist outside of these Three ?
The First Principle of the All, as we have indicated it, is at once the most simplex and the most exaltedly transcendent that can be discovered : it is unsound to double the Persons by distinguishing between potentiality and act in an immaterial Existence whose Act is its Essence.
Similarly we cannot pose two Intellectual-Principles, one in rest and one in movement. . . . The Divine Mind has its eternal, immobile Act towards The One ; the Reason which descends from It to the Soul and makes the Soul intellective cannot constitute a distinct Hypostasis. . . . Nor may we conceive two Divine Minds, one knowing and the other knowing that It knows ; thinking may be dis- tinguished, no doubt, from thinking that one is thinking ; but in the entire process there is really only one consciousness aware of its activity ; it would be absurd to suppose that the Authentic Intelligence could ever be thus unconscious of its act. ... No ; the Intellectual-Principle has Intellection of Itself ; and the Intellectual and Intelligible Kosmos which is its Thought is also Itself : therefore the Intellectual- Principle in Its Intellection has self-consciousness ; It necessarily knows Itself. (Plotinus urges, further, that if we are to suppose, with certain Gnostics, a second Intellectual-Principle conscious of the action of an unconscious first, we open the list of an unending series of Divine Minds.)
So, too, the supposition that a first Intellectual-Principle engenders in the Soul-of-the-All a second Intellectual-Principle intermediate between Divine Mind and Soul, takes away from the Soul its intellective-nature (n) . . . on this hypo- thesis the Soul would possess not the Divine Intellectual Principle but merely an image of it. . . . We can, therefore, admit only these Three Hypostases in the Supreme ; one Transcendent ; one Intellectual-Principle, self-identical, unswerving ever, imitating the Father as nearly as may be (n) ; then Soul, with the reserve that the Soul in us, while in part always dwelling with the Intellectual Existences, is in part fallen to the realm of sense and in part again occupies an intermediate region.”
Notes
"The Soul’s Intellective-Nature” ; — This refers to the Plotinian doctrine that the Soul is a Logos, a Reason-Principle or Idea or Thought of the Divine Mind : —
III. 2, 2. " For what emanates from the Intellectual-Principle is a Reason-
Principle, a Logos.”
III. 6, i8. " The Soul, itself a Divine Thought and possessing the Divine
Thoughts, or Ideas, of all things, contains all things concentred within it.”
If the Soul is one of many Ideas in the Intellectual-Principle it is hard to see why there should be only one All-Soul ; but Plotinus is concerned in opposing, not so much the " superfluous multiplication.” of lower forms of Being as the multi- plication of grades in the Intellectual-Realm ; the ninth tractate of the Second Ennead, " Against the Gnostics,” contains an elaborate refutation of such needless subdivision of the Divine.
" One Intellectual-Principle ” : — The one Divine Intellectual-Principle is, as we have seen. Intelligent no less than Intelligible (is at once the subject and object of True- Knowing). The Ideas which it contains are understood, in Philo’s sense, as Intellectual Powers : —
V. 9, 8. " No Idea is anything other than the Intellectual-Principle : each is
the Intellectual-Principle ; and the entire Intellectual-Principle is the entirety of the Ideas ... as a science entire is the entirety of the truths it sums.”
IV. 8, 3. " Every Intelligence dwells in that Place of Intellection, and there,
too, dwell the Intellectual-Forces, the Ideas, with ail particular Intelligences ; for Divine Mind is not a pure Unity but a Unity in Multiplicity.”