Such must be the nature and such the origin of the entire Spirit Order, each — like its fellow. Love — has its appointed sphere, is powerful there, and wholly devoted to it, and, like Love, none is ever complete of itself but always straining towards some good which it sees in things of the partial sphere.
We understand, now, why good men have no other Love — no other Eros of life — than that for the Absolute and Authentic Good, and never follow the random attractions known to those ranged under the lower Spirit Kind.
Each human being is set under his own Spirit-Guides, but this is mere blank possession when they ignore their own and live by some other spirit adopted by them as more closely attuned to the operative part of the Soul in them. Those that go after evil are natures that have merged all the Love-Principles within them in the evil desires springing in their hearts and allowed the right reason, which belongs to our kind, to fall under the spell of false ideas from another source.
All the natural Loves, all that serve the ends of Nature, are good ; in a lesser Soul, inferior in rank and in scope ; in the greater Soul, superior ; but all belong to the order of Being. Those forms of Love that do not serve the purposes of Nature are merely accidents attending on perver- sion : in no sense are they Real-Beings or even manifestations of any Reality ; for they are no true issue of Soul ; they are merely accompani- ments of a spiritual flaw which the Soul automatically exhibits in the total of disposition and conduct.
In a word ; all that is truly good in a Soul acting to the purposes of nature and within its appointed order, all this is Real-Being : anything else is alien, no act of the Soul, but merely something that happens to it : a parallel may be found in false mentation, notions behind which there is no reality as there is in the case of authentic ideas, the eternal, the strictly defined, in which there is at once an act of true knowing, a truly knowable object and authentic existence — and this not merely in the Absolute, but also in the particular being that is occupied by the authen- tically knowable and by the Intellectual-Principle manifest in every several form.
In each particular human being we must admit the existence of the authentic Intellective Act and of the authentically knowable object — though not as wholly merged into our being, since we are not these in the absolute and not exclusively these — and hence our longing for absolute things : it is the expression of our intellective activities : if we sometimes care for the partial, that affection is not direct but accidental, like our knowledge that a given triangular figure is made up of two right angles because the absolute triangle is so.
But what are we to understand by this Zeus with the garden into which, we are told, Poros or Wealth entered ? And what is the garden ?
We have seen that the Aphrodite of the Myth is the Soul and that Poros, Wealth, is the Reason-Principle of the Universe : we have still to explain Zeus and his garden.
We cannot take Zeus to be the Soul, which we have agreed is repre- sented by Aphrodite.
Plato, who must be our guide in this question, speaks in the Phaedrus of this God, Zeus, as the Great Leader — though elsewhere he seems to rank him as one of three — but in the Philebus he speaks more plainly when he says that there is in Zeus not only a royal Soul, but also a royal Intellect.
As a mighty Intellect and Soul, he must be a principle of Cause ; he must be the highest for several reasons but especially because to be King and Leader is to be the chief cause : Zeus then is the Intellectual Principle. Aphrodite, his daughter, issue of him, dwelling with him, will be Soul, her very name Aphrodite (=the habra, delicate) indicating the beauty and gleam and innocence and delicate grace of the Soul.
And if we take the male gods to represent the Intellectual Powers and the female gods to be their souls — to every Intellectual Principle its companion Soul — we are forced, thus also, to make Aphrodite the Soul of Zeus ; and the identification is confirmed by Priests and Theologians who consider Aphrodite and Hera one and the same and call Aphrodite’s star (“ Venus ”) the star of Hera.
Iii. 5. 9]
This Poros, Possession, then, is the Reason-Principle of all that exists in the Intellectual Realm and in the supreme Intellect ; but being more diffused, kneaded out as it were, it must touch Soul, be in Soul, (as the next lower principle).
For, aU that lies gathered in the Intellect is native to it : nothing enters from without ; but “ Poros intoxicated ” is some Power deriving satisfaction outside itself : what, then, can we understand by this member of the Supreme filled with Nectar but a Reason-Principle falling from a loftier essence to a lower ? This means that the Reason-Principle upon “ the birth of Aphrodite ” left the Intellectual for the Soul, breaking into the garden of Zeus.
A garden is a place of beauty and a glory of wealth : all the loveli- ness that Zeus maintains takes its splendour from the Reason-Principle within him ; for all this beauty is the radiation of the Divine Intellect upon the Divine Soul, which it has penetrated. What could the Garden of Zeus indicate but the images of his Being and the splendours of his glory ? And what could these divine splendours and beauties be but the Ideas streaming from him ?
These Reason-Principles — this Poros who is the lavishness, the abundance of Beauty — are at one and are made manifest ; this is the Nectar-drunkenness. For the Nectar of the gods can be no other than what the god-nature essentially demands ; and this is the Reason pouring down from the divine Mind.
The Intellectual Principle possesses Itself to satiety, but there is no " dnmken ” abandonment in this possession which brings nothing alien to it. But the Reason-Principle — as its offspring, a later h3rpostasis — is already a separate Being and established in another Realm, and so is said to lie in the garden of this Zeus who is divine Mind ; and this lying in the garden takes place at the moment when, in our way of speaking. Aphrodite enters the realm of Being.
“ Our way of speaking ” — for myths, if they are to serve their pur- pose, must necessarily import time-distinctions into their subject and will often present as separate. Powers which exist in unity but differ in rank and faculty ; they will relate the births of the unbegotten and dis- criminate where all is one substance ; the truth is conveyed in the only manner possible, it is left to our good sense to bring all together again.
On this principle we have, here. Soul (successively) dwelling with the divine Intelligence, breaking away from it, and yet again being filled to satiety with the divine Ideas — the beautiful abounding in all plenty, so that every splendour become manifest in it with the images of whatever is lovely — Soul which, taken as one all, is Aphrodite, while in it may be distinguished the Reason-Principles summed under the names of Plenty and Possession, produced by the downflow of the Nectar of the over realm. The splendours contained in Soul are thought of as the garden of Zeus with reference to their existing within Life ; and Poros sleeps in this garden in the sense of being sated and heavy with its produce. Life is eternally manifest, an eternal existent among the existences, and the banqueting of the gods means no more than that they have their Being in that vital blessedness. And Love — “ born at the banquet of the gods " — has of necessity been eternally in existence, for it springs from the intention of the Soul towards its Best, towards the Good ; as long as Soul has been. Love has been.
Still this Love is of mixed quality. On the one hand there is in it the lack which keeps it craving : on the other, it is not entirely destitute ; the deficient seeks more of what it has, and certainly nothing absolutely void of good would ever go seeking the good.
It is said then to spring from Poverty and Possession in the sense that Lack and Aspiration and the Memory of the Ideal Principles, all present together in the Soul, produce that Act towards The Good which is Love. Its Mother is Poverty, since striving is for the needy ; and this Poverty is Matter, for Matter is the whoUy poor : the very ambition towards the good is a sign of existing indetermination ; there is a lack of shape and of Reason in that which must aspire towards the Good,
III. 6.1] the impassivity of the unembodied
and the greater degree of effort implies the lower depth of materiality. A thing aspiring towards the Good is an Ideal-principle only when the striving (with attainment) will leave it still unchanged in Kind : when it must take in something other than itself, its aspiration is the present- ment of Matter to the incoming power.
Thus Love is at once, in some degree a thing of Matter and at the same time a Celestial, sprung of the Soul ; for Love lacks its Good but, from its very birth, strives towards It.
The Impassivity of the Unembodied
In our theory, feelings are not states ; they are action upon experi- ence, action accompanied by judgment : the states, we hold, are seated elsewhere ; they may be referred to the vitalised body ; the judgment resides in the Soul, and is distinct from the state — for, if it is not distinct, another judgment is demanded, one that is distinct, and, so, we may be sent back for ever.
Still, this leaves it undecided whether in the act of judgment the judging faculty does or does not take to itself something of its object.
If (as is sometimes asserted) the judging faculty does actually receive an imprint, then it partakes of the state — though what are called the Impressions may be of quite another nature than is supposed ; they may be like Thought, that is to say they may be acts rather than states ; there may be, here too, awareness without participation.
For ourselves, it could never be in our system — or in our liking — to bring the Soul down to participation in such modes and modifications as the warmth and cold of material frames.
What is known as the Impressionable faculty of the soul — to patheti- kon — would need to be identified : we must satisfy ourselves as to whether this too, like the Soul as a unity, is to be classed as immirne or, on the contrary, as precisely the only part susceptible of being affected ;
this question, however, may be held over ; we proceed to examine its preliminaries.
Even in the superior phase of the Soul — that which precedes the impressionable faculty and any sensation — how can we reconcile immunity with the indwelling of vice, false notions, ignorance ? Inviolability ; and yet likings and dislikings, the Soul enjoying, grieving, angry, grudg- ing, envying, desiring, never at peace but stirring and shifting with every- thing that confronts it !
If the Soul were material and had magnitude, it would be difficult, indeed quite impossible, to make it appear to be immune, unchangeable, when any of such emotions lodge in it. And even considering it as an Authentic Being, devoid of magnitude and necessarily indestructible, we must be very careful how we attribute any such experiences to it or we will find ourselves unconsciously making it subject to dissolution. If its essence is a Number or as we hold a Reason-Principle, under neither head could it be susceptible of feeling. We can think, only, that it enter- tains imreasoned reasons and experiences unexperienced, all transmuted from the material frames, foreign and recognised only by parallel, so that it possesses in a kind of non-possession and knows affection without being affected. How this can be demands enquiry.
Let us begin with virtue and vice in the Soul. What has really occurred when, as we say, vice is present ? In speaking of extirpating evil and implanting goodness, of introducing order and beauty to replace a former ugliness, we talk in terms of real things in the Soul.