For the parent-Soul was a Real-Being sprung directly from the Act of the Hypostasis that ranks before it ; it had life ; it was a constituent in the Real-Being of all that authentically is — in the Real-Being which looks, rapt, towards the very Highest. That was the first object of its vision ; it looked towards it as towards its good, and it rejoiced in the looking ; and the quality of what it saw was such that the contemplation could not be void of effect ; in virtue of that rapture, of its position in regard to its object, of the intensity of its gaze, the Soul conceived and brought forth an offspring worthy of itself and of the vision. Thus ; there is a strenuous activity of contemplation in the Soul ; there is an emanation towards it from the object contemplated ; and Eros is bom, the Love which is an eye filled with its vision, a seeing that bears its image with it ; Eros taking its name, probably, from the fact that its essential being is due to this horasis, this seeing. Of course Love, as an emotion, will take its name from Love, the Person, since a Real-Being cannot but be prior to what lacks this reality. The mental state will be designated as Love, like the Hypostasis, though it is no more than a particular act directed towards a particular object ; but it must not be confused with the Absolute Love, the Divine Being. The Eros that belongs to the supernal Soul must be of one temper with it ; it must itself look aloft as being of the household of that Soul, dependent upon that Soul, its very offspring ; and therefore caring for nothing but the contemplation of the Gods.
Once that Soul which is the primal source of light to the heavens is
recognised as an Hypostasis standing distinct and aloof, it must be admitted that Love too is distinct and aloof though not, perhaps, so loftily celestial a being as the Soul. Our own best we conceive as inside ourselves and yet something apart ; so, we must think of this Love — as essentially resident where the unmingling Soul inhabits.
But besides this purest Soul, there must be also a Soul of the All : at once there is another Love — the eye with which this second Soul looks upwards — like the supernal Eros engendered by force of desire. This Aphrodite, the secondary Soul, is of this Universe — not Soul un- mingled alone, not Soul, the Absolute, giving birth, therefore, to the Love concerned with the universal life ; no, this is the Love presiding over marriages ; but it, also, has its touch of the upward desire ; and, in the degree of that striving, it stirs and leads upwards the Souls of the young and every Soul with which it is incorporated in so far as there is a natural tendency to remembrance of the divine. For every Soul is striving towards The Good, even the mingling Soul and that of particular beings, for each holds directly from the divine Soul, and is its offspring,
Does each individual Soul, then, contain within itself such a Love in essence and substantial reality ?
Since not only the pure All-Soul but also that of the Universe contain such a Love, it would be difficult to explain why our personal Soul should not. It must be so, even, with all that has life.
This indwelling love is no other than the Spirit which, as we are told, walks with every being, the affection dominant in each several nature. It implants the characteristic desire ; the particular Soul, strained towards its own natural objects, brings forth its own Eros, the guiding spirit realising its worth and the quality of its Being.
As the All-Soul contains the Universal Love, so must the single Soul be allowed its own single Love : and as closely as the single Soul holds to the AU-Soul, never cut off but embraced within it, the two together constituting one principle of life, so the single separate Love holds to the All-Love. Similarly, the individual love keeps with the indi-
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vidual Soul as that other, the great Love, goes with the All-Soul ; and the Love within the AU permeates it throughout so that the one Love becomes many, showing itself where it chooses at any moment of the Universe, taking definite shape in these its partial phases and revealing itself at its will.
In the same way we must conceive many Aphrodites in the All, Spirits entering it together with Love, all emanating from an Aphrodite of the All, a train of particular Aphrodites dependent upon the first, and each with the particular Love in attendance : this multiplicity cannot be denied, if Soul be the mother of Love, and Aphrodite mean Soul, and Love be an act of a Soul seeking good.
This Love, then, leader of particular Souls to The Good, is twofold : the Love in the loftier Soul would be a god ever linking the Soul to the divine ; the Love in the mingling Soul will be a celestial spirit.
But what is the Nature of this Spirit — of the Supemals in general ?
The Spirit-Kind is treated in the Symposium where, with much about the others, we learn of Eros — Love — bom to Penia — Poverty — and Poros — Possession — who is son of Metis — Resource — at Aphrodite’s birth feast.
But (the passage has been misunderstood for) to taLe Plato as mean- ing, by Eros, this Universe — and not simply the Love native within it — involves much that is self-contradictory.
For one thing, the universe is described as a blissful god and as self- sufficing, while this “ Love ” is confessedly neither divine nor self- sufficing but in ceaseless need.
Again, this Kosmos is a compound of body and soul ; but Aphrodite to Plato is the Soul itself, therefore Aphrodite would necessarily be a constituent part of Eros, (not mother but) dominant member ! A man is the man’s Soul, if the world is, similarly, the world’s Soul, then Aphro- dite, the Soul, is identioal with Love, the Kosmos ! And why should this one spirit. Love, be the Universe to the exclusion of all the others, which certainly are sprung from the same Essential-Being ? Our only escape would be to make the Kosmos a complex of Supernals.
Love, again, is called the Dispenser of beautiful children : does this apply to the Universe ? Love is represented as homeless, bedless and bare-footed : would not that be a shabby description of the Kosmos and quite out of the truth ?
What then, in sum, is to be thought of Love and of his “ birth ” as we are told of it ?
Clearly we have to establish the significance, here, of Poverty and Possession, and show in what way the parentage is appropriate : we have also to bring these two into line with the other Supemals since one spirit nature, one spirit essence, must characterise all unless they are to have merely a name in common.
We must, therefore, lay down the grounds on which we distinguish the Gods from the Celestials — that is, when we emphasise the separate nature of the two orders and are not, as often in practice, including these Spirits under the common name of Gods.
It is our teaching and conviction that the Gods are immune to all passion while we attribute experience and emotion to the Celestials which, though eternal Beings and directly next to the Gods, are already a step towards ourselves and stand between the divine and the human.
But by what process (of degeneration) was the immunity lost ? What in their nature led them downwards to the inferior ?
And other questions present themselves.
Does the Intellectual Realm include no member of this spirit order, not even one ? And does the Kosmos contain only these spirits, God being confined to the Intellectual ? Or are there Gods in the sub-celestial too, the Kosmos itself being a God, the third, as is commonly said, and the Powers down to the Moon being all Gods as well ?
It is best not to use the word “ Celestial ” of any Being of that Realm ; the word “ God ” may be applied to the Essential-Celestial — the auto-daimon — and even to the Visible Powers of the Universe of Sense down to the Moon ; Gods, these too, visible, secondary, sequent upon
the Gods of the Intellectual Realm, consonant with Them, held about Them, as the radiance about the star.
What, then, are these spirits ?
A Celestial is the representative generated by each Soul when it enters the Kosmos.
And why, by a Soul entering the Kosmos ?
Because Soul pure of the Kosmos generates not a Celestial Spirit but a God ; hence it is that we have spoken of Love, offspring of Aphrodite the Pure Soul, as a God,
But, first what prevents every one of the Celestials from being an Eros, a Love ? And why are they not untouched by Matter like the Gods ?
On the first question : — Every Celestial bom in the striving of the Soul towards the good and beautiful is an Eros ; and all the Souls within the Kosmos do engender this Celestial ; but other Spirit-Beings, equally bom from the Soul of the All, but by other faculties of that Soul, have other functions : they are for the direct service of the All, and administer particular things to the purpose of the Universe entire. The Soul of the All must be adequate to all that is and therefore must bring into being spirit powers serviceable not merely in one function but to its entire charge.
But what participation can the Celestials have in Matter, and in what Matter ?
Certainly none in bodily Matter ; that would make them simply living things of the order of sense. And if, even, they are to invest themselves in bodies of air or of fire, the nature must have already been altered before they could have any contact with the corporeal. The Pure does not mix, unmediated, with body — though many think that the Celestial-Kind, of its very essence, comports a body aerial or of fire.
But (since this is not so) why should one order of Celestial descend to body and another not ? The difference implies the existence of some cause or medium working upon such as thus descend. What would con- stitute such a medium ?
We are forced to assume that there is a Matter of the Intellectual
Order, and that Beings partaking of it are thereby enabled to enter into the lower Matter, the corporeal.
This is the significance of Plato’s account of the birth of Love.
The drunkenness of the father Poros or Possession is caused by Nectar, “ wine yet not existing ” ; Love is bom before the realm of sense has come into being : Penia (Poverty) had participation in the Intellectual before the lower image of that divine Realm had appeared ; she dwelt in that Sphere, but as a mingled being consisting partly of Form but partly also of that indetermination which belongs to the Soul before she attains the Good and when aU her knowledge of Reality is a fore- intimation veiled by the indeterminate and unordered ; in this state (of fore-feeling and desiring The Good) Poverty brings forth the Hypos- tasis, Love.
This, then, is a union of Reason with something that is not Reason but a mere indeterminate striving in a being not yet illuminated : the offspring Love, therefore, is not perfect, not self-sufficient, but unfinished, bearing the signs of its parentage, the undirected striving and the self- sufficient Reason. This offspring is a Reason-Principle but not purely so ; for it includes within itself an aspiration ill-defined, unreasoned, unlimited — it can never be sated as long as it contains within itself that element of the Indeterminate. Love, then, clings to the Soul, from which it sprung as from the principle of its Being, but it is lessened by including an element of the Reason-Principle which did not remain self-concen- trated but blended with the indeterminate, not, it is true, by immediate contact but through its emanation. Love, therefore, is like a goad ; it is without resource in itself ; even winning its end, it is poor again.
It cannot be satisfied because a thing of mixture never can be so : true satisfaction is only for what has its plenitude in its own being ; where craving is due to an inborn deficiency, there may be satisfaction at some given moment but it does not last. Love, then, has on the one side the powerlessness of its native inadequacy, on the other the resource inherited from the Reason-Kind.
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