MacKenna-Plotinus: earth

  

But suppose that he himself is offered a victim in sacrifice? Can he think it an evil to die beside the altars? But if he go unburied? Wheresoever it lie, under earth or over earth, his body will always rot. Enneads   I,4,

This, indeed, is the mood even of those who, having witnessed the manifestation of Gods or Supernals, can never again feel the old delight in the comeliness of material forms: what then are we to think of one that contemplates Absolute Beauty in Its essential integrity, no accumulation of flesh and matter, no dweller on earth or in the heavens – so perfect Its purity – far above all such things in that they are non-essential, composite, not primal but descending from This? Beholding this Being – the Choragos of all Existence, the Self-Intent that ever gives forth and never takes – resting, rapt, in the vision and possession of so lofty a loveliness, growing to Its likeness, what Beauty can the soul yet lack? For This, the Beauty supreme, the absolute, and the primal, fashions Its lovers   to Beauty and makes them also worthy of love. Enneads I,6,

For not he that has failed of the joy that is in colour or in visible forms, not he that has failed of power or of honours or of kingdom has failed, but only he that has failed of only This, for Whose winning he should renounce kingdoms and command over earth and ocean and sky, if only, spurning the world of sense from beneath his feet, and straining to This, he may see. Enneads I,6,

If this be so, how do we explain the teaching that evils can never pass away but "exist of necessity," that "while evil has no place in the divine order, it haunts mortal nature and this place for ever"? Does this mean that heaven is clear of evil, ever moving its orderly way, spinning on the appointed path, no injustice There or any flaw, no wrong done by any power to any other but all true to the settled plan, while injustice and disorder prevail on earth, designated as "the Mortal Kind and this Place"? Not quite so: for the precept to "flee hence" does not refer to earth and earthly life. The flight we read of consists not in quitting earth but in living our earth-life "with justice and piety in the light of philosophy"; it is vice we are to flee, so that clearly to the writer Evil is simply vice with the sequels of vice. And when the disputant in that dialogue says that, if men could be convinced of the doctrine advanced, there would be an end of Evil, he is answered, "That can never be: Evil is of necessity, for there must be a contrary to good." Enneads I,8,

Matter exists; Soul exists; and they occupy, so to speak, one place. There is not one place for Matter and another for Soul-Matter, for instance, kept to earth, Soul in the air: the soul’s "separate place" is simply its not being in Matter; that is, its not being united with it; that is that there be no compound unit consisting of Soul and Matter; that is that Soul be not moulded in Matter as in a matrix; this is the Soul’s apartness. Enneads I,8,

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. Enneads: II I

We have a parallel in our earth, constant from eternity to pattern and to mass; the air, too, never fails; and there is always water: all the changes of these elements leave unchanged the Principle of the total living thing, our world. In our own constitution, again, there is a ceaseless shifting of particles – and that with outgoing loss – and yet the individual persists for a long time: where there is no question of an outside region, the body-principle cannot clash with soul as against the identity and endless duration of the living thing. Enneads: II I

Of these material elements – for example – fire, the keen and swift, cooperates by its upward tendency as earth by its lingering below; for we must not imagine that the fire, once it finds itself at the point where its ascent must stop, settles down as in its appropriate place, no longer seeking, like all the rest, to expand in both directions. No: but higher is not possible; lower is repugnant to its Kind; all that remains for it is to be tractable and, answering to a need of its nature, to be drawn by the Soul to the activity of life, and so to move to in a glorious place, in the Soul. Anyone that dreads its falling may take heart; the circuit of the Soul provides against any declination, embracing, sustaining; and since fire has of itself no downward tendency it accepts that guiding without resistance. The partial elements constituting our persons do not suffice for their own cohesion; once they are brought to human shape, they must borrow elsewhere if the organism is to be maintained: but in the upper spheres since there can be no loss by flux no such replenishment is needed. Enneads: II I

But how explain the permanence There, while the content of this sphere – its elements and its living things alike – are passing? The reason is given by Plato: the celestial order is from God, the living things of earth from the gods sprung from God; and it is law that the offspring of God endures. Enneads: II I

In other words, the celestial soul – and our souls with it – springs directly next from the Creator, while the animal life of this earth is produced by an image which goes forth from that celestial soul and may be said to flow downwards from it. Enneads: II I

Timaeus   pronounced the material frame of the All to consist primarily of earth and fire for visibility, earth for solidity – and deduced that the stars must be mainly composed of fire, but not solely since there is no doubt they are solid. Enneads: II I

And this is probably a true account. Plato accepts it as indicated by all the appearances. And, in fact, to all our perception – as we see them and derive from them the impression of illumination – the stars appear to be mostly, if not exclusively, fire: but on reasoning into the matter we judge that since solidity cannot exist apart from earth-matter, they must contain earth as well. Enneads: II I

Admitting [with Timaeus; as a logical truth] that two self-contained entities, standing as extremes to each other need for their coherence two intermediaries; we may still question whether this holds good with regard to physical bodies. Certainly water and earth can be mixed without any such intermediate. It might seem valid to object that the intermediates are already present in the earth and the water; but a possible answer would be, "Yes, but not as agents whose meeting is necessary to the coherence of those extremes." Enneads: II I

None the less we will take it that the coherence of extremes is produced by virtue of each possessing all the intermediates. It is still not proven that fire is necessary to the visibility of earth and earth to the solidarity of fire. Enneads: II I

Thus we are told that earth cannot have concrete existence without the help of some moist element – the moisture in water being the necessary adhesive – but admitting that we so find it, there is still a contradiction in pretending that any one element has a being of its own and in the same breath denying its self-coherence, making its subsistence depend upon others, and so, in reality, reducing the specific element to nothing. How can we talk of the existence of the definite Kind, earth – earth essential – if there exists no single particle of earth which actually is earth without any need of water to secure its self-cohesion? What has such an adhesive to act upon if there is absolutely no given magnitude of real earth to which it may bind particle after particle in its business of producing the continuous mass? If there is any such given magnitude, large or small, of pure earth, then earth can exist in its own nature, independently of water: if there is no such primary particle of pure earth, then there is nothing whatever for the water to bind. As for air – air unchanged, retaining its distinctive quality – how could it conduce to the subsistence of a dense material like earth? Similarly with fire. No doubt Timaeus speaks of it as necessary not to the existence but to the visibility of earth and the other elements; and certainly light is essential to all visibility – we cannot say that we see darkness, which implies, precisely, that nothing is seen, as silence means nothing being heard. Enneads: II I

But all this does not assure us that the earth to be visible must contain fire: light is sufficient: snow, for example, and other extremely cold substances gleam without the presence of fire – though of course it might be said that fire was once there and communicated colour before disappearing. Enneads: II I

As to the composition of water, we must leave it an open question whether there can be such a thing as water without a certain proportion of earth. Enneads: II I

But how can air, the yielding element, contain earth? Fire, again: is earth perhaps necessary there since fire is by its own nature devoid of continuity and not a thing of three dimensions? Supposing it does not possess the solidity of the three dimensions, it has that of its thrust; now, cannot this belong to it by the mere right and fact of its being one of the corporeal entities in nature? Hardness is another matter, a property confined to earth-stuff. Remember that gold – which is water – becomes dense by the accession not of earth but of denseness or consolidation: in the same way fire, with Soul present within it, may consolidate itself upon the power of the Soul; and there are living beings of fire among the Celestials. Enneads: II I

Thus: In the universe as a whole there must necessarily be such a degree of solidity, that is to say, of resistance, as will ensure that the earth, set in the centre, be a sure footing and support to the living beings moving over it, and inevitably communicate something of its own density to them: the earth will possess coherence by its own unaided quality, but visibility by the presence of fire: it will contain water against the dryness which would prevent the cohesion of its particles; it will hold air to lighten its bulky matters; it will be in contact with the celestial fire – not as being a member of the sidereal system but by the simple fact that the fire there and our earth both belong to the ordered universe so that something of the earth is taken up by the fire as something of the fire by the earth and something of everything by everything else. Enneads: II I

This borrowing, however, does not mean that the one thing taking-up from the other enters into a composition, becoming an element in a total of both: it is simply a consequence of the kosmic fellowship; the participant retains its own being and takes over not the thing itself but some property of the thing, not air but air’s yielding softness, not fire but fire’s incandescence: mixing is another process, a complete surrender with a resultant compound not, as in this case, earth – remaining earth, the solidity and density we know – with something of fire’s qualities superadded. Enneads: II I

We have authority for this where we read: "At the second circuit from the earth, God kindled a light": he is speaking of the sun which, elsewhere, he calls the all-glowing and, again, the all-gleaming: thus he prevents us imagining it to be anything else but fire, though of a peculiar kind; in other words it is light, which he distinguishes from flame as being only modestly warm: this light is a corporeal substance but from it there shines forth that other "light" which, though it carries the same name, we pronounce incorporeal, given forth from the first as its flower and radiance, the veritable "incandescent body." Plato’s word earthy is commonly taken in too depreciatory a sense: he is thinking of earth as the principle of solidity; we are apt to ignore his distinctions and think of the concrete clay. Enneads: II I

Fire of this order, giving forth this purest light, belongs to the upper realm, and there its seat is fixed by nature; but we must not, on that account, suppose the flame of earth to be associated with the beings of that higher sphere. Enneads: II I

The truth may be resumed in this way: There is a lowest power of the Soul, a nearest to earth, and this is interwoven throughout the entire universe: another phase possesses sensation, while yet another includes the Reason which is concerned with the objects of sensation: this higher phase holds itself to the spheres, poised towards the Above but hovering over the lesser Soul and giving forth to it an effluence which makes it more intensely vital. Enneads II,2,

In that case they can purvey only heat or cold – if cold from the stars can be thought of – that is to say, any communication from them will affect only our bodily nature, since all they have to communicate to us is merely corporeal. This implies that no considerable change can be caused in the bodies affected since emanations merely corporeal cannot differ greatly from star to star, and must, moreover, blend upon earth into one collective resultant: at most the differences would be such as depend upon local position, upon nearness or farness with regard to the centre of influence. This reasoning, of course, is as valid of any cold emanation there may be as of the warm. Enneads II,3,

Then there is the notion that the moon, in conjunction with a certain star, is softened at her full but is malignant in the same conjunction when her light has waned; yet, if anything of this order could be admitted, the very opposite would be the case. For when she is full to us she must be dark on the further hemisphere, that is to that star which stands above her; and when dark to us she is full to that other star, upon which only then, on the contrary, does she look with her light. To the moon itself, in fact, it can make no difference in what aspect she stands, for she is always lit on the upper or on the under half: to the other star, the warmth from the moon, of which they speak, might make a difference; but that warmth would reach it precisely when the moon is without light to us; at its darkest to us it is full to that other, and therefore beneficent. The darkness of the moon to us is of moment to the earth, but brings no trouble to the planet above. That planet, it is alleged, can give no help on account of its remoteness and therefore seems less well disposed; but the moon at its full suffices to the lower realm so that the distance of the other is of no importance. When the moon, though dark to us, is in aspect with the Fiery Star she is held to be favourable: the reason alleged is that the force of Mars is all-sufficient since it contains more fire than it needs. Enneads II,3,

Wealth may be due to personal activity: in this case if the body has contributed, part of the effect is due to whatever has contributed towards the physical powers, first the parents and then, if place has had its influence, sky and earth; if the body has borne no part of the burden, then the success, and all the splendid accompaniments added by the Recompensers, must be attributed to virtue exclusively. If fortune has come by gift from the good, then the source of the wealth is, again, virtue: if by gift from the evil, but to a meritorious recipient, then the credit must be given to the action of the best in them: if the recipient is himself unprincipled, the wealth must be attributed primarily to the very wickedness and to whatsoever is responsible for the wickedness, while the givers bear an equal share in the wrong. Enneads II,3,

One theory might be that the Soul creates the particular entities in succession – man followed by horse and other animals domestic or wild: fire and earth, though, first of all – that it watches these creations acting upon each other whether to help or to harm, observes, and no more, the tangled web formed of all these strands, and their unfailing sequences; and that it makes no concern of the result beyond securing the reproduction of the primal living-beings, leaving them for the rest to act upon each other according to their definite natures. Enneads II,3,

To those who assert that creation is the work of the Soul after the failing of its wings, we answer that no such disgrace could overtake the Soul of the All. If they tell us of its falling, they must tell us also what caused the fall. And when did it take place? If from eternity, then the Soul must be essentially a fallen thing: if at some one moment, why not before that? We assert its creative act to be a proof not of decline but rather of its steadfast hold. Its decline could consist only in its forgetting the Divine: but if it forgot, how could it create? Whence does it create but from the things it knew in the Divine? If it creates from the memory of that vision, it never fell. Even supposing it to be in some dim intermediate state, it need not be supposed more likely to decline: any inclination would be towards its Prior, in an effort to the clearer vision. If any memory at all remained, what other desire could it have than to retrace the way? What could it have been planning to gain by world-creating? Glory? That would be absurd – a motive borrowed from the sculptors of our earth. Enneads: II VIII.

And yet – what reflection of that world could be conceived more beautiful than this of ours? What fire could be a nobler reflection of the fire there than the fire we know here? Or what other earth than this could have been modelled after that earth? And what globe more minutely perfect than this, or more admirably ordered in its course could have been conceived in the image of the self-centred circling of the World of Intelligibles? And for a sun figuring the Divine sphere, if it is to be more splendid than the sun visible to us, what a sun it must be. Enneads: II VIII.

Their own soul, the soul of the least of mankind, they declare deathless, divine; but the entire heavens and the stars within the heavens have had no communion with the Immortal Principle, though these are far purer and lovelier than their own souls – yet they are not blind to the order, the shapely pattern, the discipline prevailing in the heavens, since they are the loudest in complaint of the disorder that troubles our earth. We are to imagine the deathless Soul choosing of design the less worthy place, and preferring to abandon the nobler to the Soul that is to die. Enneads: II VIII.

Besides, how could such a soul be a bond holding the four elements together when it is a later thing and rises from them? And this element – soul is described as possessing consciousness and will and the rest – what can we think? Furthermore, these teachers, in their contempt for this creation and this earth, proclaim that another earth has been made for them into which they are to enter when they depart. Now this new earth is the Reason-Form [the Logos] of our world. Why should they desire to live in the archetype of a world abhorrent to them? Then again, what is the origin of that pattern world? It would appear, from the theory, that the Maker had already declined towards the things of this sphere before that pattern came into being. Enneads: II VIII.

This earth of ours is full of varied life-forms and of immortal beings; to the very heavens it is crowded. And the stars, those of the upper and the under spheres, moving in their ordered path, fellow-travellers with the universe, how can they be less than gods? Surely they must be morally good: what could prevent them? All that occasions vice here below is unknown there evil of body, perturbed and perturbing. Enneads: II VIII.

Wealth and poverty, and all inequalities of that order, are made ground of complaint. But this is to ignore that the Sage demands no equality in such matters: he cannot think that to own many things is to be richer   or that the powerful have the better of the simple; he leaves all such preoccupations to another kind of man. He has learned that life on earth has two distinct forms, the way of the Sage and the way of the mass, the Sage intent upon the sublimest, upon the realm above, while those of the more strictly human type fall, again, under two classes, the one reminiscent of virtue and therefore not without touch with good, the other mere populace, serving to provide necessaries to the better sort. Enneads: II VIII.

Another difficulty: These people come upon earth not as Soul-Images but as veritable Souls; yet, by great stress and strain, one or two of them are able to stir beyond the limits of the world, and when they do attain Reminiscence barely carry with them some slight recollection of the Sphere they once knew: on the other hand, this Image, a new-comer into being, is able, they tell us – as also is its Mother – to form at least some dim representation of the celestial world. It is an Image, stamped in Matter, yet it not merely has the conception of the Supreme and adopts from that world the plan of this, but knows what elements serve the purpose. How, for instance, did it come to make fire before anything else? What made it judge fire a better first than some other object? Again, if it created the fire of the Universe by thinking of fire, why did it not make the Universe at a stroke by thinking of the Universe? It must have conceived the product complete from the first; the constituent elements would be embraced in that general conception. Enneads: II VIII.

The creation must have been in all respects more according to the way of Nature than to that of the arts – for the arts are of later origin than Nature and the Universe, and even at the present stage the partial things brought into being by the natural Kinds do not follow any such order – first fire, then the several other elements, then the various blends of these – on the contrary the living organism entire is encompassed and rounded off within the uterine germ. Why should not the material of the Universe be similarly embraced in a Kosmic Type in which earth, fire and the rest would be included? We can only suppose that these people themselves, acting by their more authentic Soul, would have produced the world by such a process, but that the Creator had not wit to do so. Enneads: II VIII.

And yet to conceive the vast span of the Heavens – to be great in that degree – to devise the obliquity of the Zodiac and the circling path of all the celestial bodies beneath it, and this earth of ours – and all in such a way that reason can be given for the plan – this could never be the work of an Image; it tells of that Power [the All-Soul] next to the very Highest Beings. Enneads: II VIII.

Epicurus   denies a Providence and recommends pleasure and its enjoyment, all that is left to us: but the doctrine under discussion is still more wanton; it carps at Providence and the Lord of Providence; it scorns every law known to us; immemorial virtue and all restraint it makes into a laughing stock, lest any loveliness be seen on earth; it cuts at the root of all orderly living, and of the righteousness which, innate in the moral sense, is made perfect by thought and by self-discipline: all that would give us a noble human being is gone. What is left for them except where the pupil by his own character betters the teaching – comes to pleasure, self-seeking, the grudge of any share with one’s fellows, the pursuit of advantage. Enneads: II VIII.

Augury, it is urged, is able from these indications to foretell what is to happen not merely to the universe as a whole, but even to individuals, and this not merely as regards external conditions of fortune but even as to the events of the mind. We observe, too, how growth or check in other orders of beings – animals and Plants – is determined by their sympathetic relations with the heavenly bodies and how widely they are influenced by them, how, for example, the various countries show a different produce according to their situation on the earth and especially their lie towards the sun. And the effect of place is not limited to plants and animals; it rules human beings too, determining their appearance, their height and colour, their mentality and their desires, their pursuits and their moral habit. Thus the universal circuit would seem to be the monarch of the All. Enneads: III I

But in fact everything follows its own Kind; the birth is a horse because it comes from the Horse Kind, a man by springing from the Human Kind; offspring answers to species. Allow the kosmic circuit its part, a very powerful influence upon the thing brought into being: allow the stars a wide material action upon the bodily part of the man, producing heat and cold and their natural resultants in the physical constitution; still does such action explain character, vocation and especially all that seems quite independent of material elements, a man taking to letters, to geometry, to gambling, and becoming an originator in any of these pursuits? And can we imagine the stars, divine beings, bestowing wickedness? And what of a doctrine that makes them wreak vengeance, as for a wrong, because they are in their decline or are being carried to a position beneath the earth – as if a decline from our point of view brought any change to themselves, as if they ever ceased to traverse the heavenly spheres and to make the same figure around the earth. Enneads: III I

And do not think that, while earth is ornate with all its growths and with living things of every race, and while the very sea has answered to the power of Soul, do not think that the great air and the ether and the far-spread heavens remain void of it: there it is that all good Souls dwell, infusing life into the stars and into that orderly eternal circuit of the heavens which in its conscious movement ever about the one Centre, seeking nothing beyond, is a faithful copy of the divine Mind. And all that is within me strives towards the Good; and each, to the measure of its faculty, attains. For from that Good all the heavens depend, with all my own Soul and the Gods that dwell in my every part, and all that lives and grows, and even all in me that you may judge inanimate. Enneads III,2,

There remains the other phase of the question – the distribution of evil to the opposite classes of men: the good go bare while the wicked are rich: all that human need demands, the least deserving have in abundance; it is they that rule; peoples and states are at their disposal. Would not all this imply that the divine power does not reach to earth? That it does is sufficiently established by the fact that Reason rules in the lower things: animals and plants have their share in Reason, Soul and Life. Enneads III,2,

Perhaps, then, it reaches to earth but is not master over all? We answer that the universe is one living organism: as well maintain that while human head and face are the work of nature and of the ruling reason-principle, the rest of the frame is due to other agencies – accident or sheer necessity – and owes its inferiority to this origin, or to the incompetence of unaided Nature. And even granting that those less noble members are not in themselves admirable it would still be neither pious nor even reverent to censure the entire structure. Enneads III,2,

Now in every living being the upper parts – head, face – are the most beautiful, the mid and lower members inferior. In the Universe the middle and lower members are human beings; above them, the Heavens and the Gods that dwell there; these Gods with the entire circling expanse of the heavens constitute the greater part of the Kosmos: the earth is but a central point, and may be considered as simply one among the stars. Yet human wrong-doing is made a matter of wonder; we are evidently asked to take humanity as the choice member of the Universe, nothing wiser existent! Enneads III,2,

Man is, therefore, a noble creation, as perfect as the scheme allows; a part, no doubt, in the fabric of the All, he yet holds a lot higher than that of all the other living things of earth. Enneads III,2,

We cannot but recognize from what we observe in this universe that some such principle of order prevails throughout the entire of existence – the minutest of things a tributary to the vast total; the marvellous art shown not merely in the mightiest works and sublimest members of the All, but even amid such littleness as one would think Providence must disdain: the varied workmanship of wonder in any and every animal form; the world of vegetation, too; the grace of fruits and even of leaves, the lavishness, the delicacy, the diversity of exquisite bloom; and all this not issuing once, and then to die out, but made ever and ever anew as the Transcendent Beings move variously over this earth. Enneads III,2,

Murders, death in all its guises, the reduction and sacking of cities, all must be to us just such a spectacle as the changing scenes of a play; all is but the varied incident of a plot, costume on and off, acted grief and lament. For on earth, in all the succession of life, it is not the Soul within but the Shadow outside of the authentic man, that grieves and complains and acts out the plot on this world stage which men have dotted with stages of their own constructing. All this is the doing of man knowing no more than to live the lower and outer life, and never perceiving that, in his weeping and in his graver doings alike, he is but at play; to handle austere matters austerely is reserved for the thoughtful: the other kind of man is himself a futility. Those incapable of thinking gravely read gravity into frivolities which correspond to their own frivolous Nature. Anyone that joins in their trifling and so comes to look on life with their eyes must understand that by lending himself to such idleness he has laid aside his own character. If Socrates   himself takes part in the trifling, he trifles in the outer Socrates. Enneads III,2,

Those that desire earthly procreation are satisfied with the beauty found on earth, the beauty of image and of body; it is because they are strangers to the Archetype, the source of even the attraction they feel towards what is lovely here. There are Souls to whom earthly beauty is a leading to the memory of that in the higher realm and these love the earthly as an image; those that have not attained to this memory do not understand what is happening within them, and take the image for the reality. Once there is perfect self-control, it is no fault to enjoy the beauty of earth; where appreciation degenerates into carnality, there is sin. Enneads III,5,

Those that love beauty of person without carnal desire love for beauty’s sake; those that have – for women, of course – the copulative love, have the further purpose of self-perpetuation: as long as they are led by these motives, both are on the right path, though the first have taken the nobler way. But, even in the right, there is the difference that the one set, worshipping the beauty of earth, look no further, while the others, those of recollection, venerate also the beauty of the other world while they, still, have no contempt for this in which they recognize, as it were, a last outgrowth, an attenuation of the higher. These, in sum, are innocent frequenters of beauty, not to be confused with the class to whom it becomes an occasion of fall into the ugly – for the aspiration towards a good degenerates into an evil often. Enneads III,5,

But body, a non-existence? Matter, on which all this universe rises, a non-existence? Mountain and rock, the wide solid earth, all that resists, all that can be struck and driven, surely all proclaims the real existence of the corporeal? And how, it will be asked, can we, on the contrary, attribute Being, and the only Authentic Being, to entities like Soul and Intellect, things having no weight or pressure, yielding to no force, offering no resistance, things not even visible? Yet even the corporeal realm witnesses for us; the resting earth has certainly a scantier share in Being than belongs to what has more motion and less solidity – and less than belongs to its own most upward element, for fire begins, already, to flit up and away outside of the body-kind. Enneads III,6,

The changes known as affections show even more clearly that where the bodily quality is most pronounced susceptibility is at its intensest – earth more susceptible than other elements, and these others again more or less so in the degree of their corporeality: sever the other elements and, failing some preventive force, they join again; but earthy matter divided remains apart indefinitely. Things whose nature represents a diminishment have no power of recuperation after even a slight disturbance and they perish; thus what has most definitely become body, having most closely approximated to non-being lacks the strength to reknit its unity: the heavy and violent crash of body against body works destruction, and weak is powerful against weak, non-being against its like. Enneads III,6,

Eliminate this Ideal-Form and the substratum ceases to be a thing of magnitude, or to appear so: the mass produced by the Idea was, let us suppose, a man or a horse; the horse-magnitude came upon the Matter when a horse was produced upon it; when the horse ceases to exist upon the Matter, the magnitude of the horse departs also. If we are told that the horse implies a certain determined bulk and that this bulk is a permanent thing, we answer that what is permanent in this case is not the magnitude of the horse but the magnitude of mass in general. That same Magnitude might be fire or earth; on their disappearance their particular magnitudes would disappear with them. Matter, then, can never take to itself either pattern or magnitude; if it did, it would no longer be able to turn from being fire, let us say, into being something else; it would become and be fire once for all. Enneads III,6,

The case of Man will be treated later on; let us speak, first, of the earth and of the trees and vegetation in general, asking ourselves what is the nature of Contemplation in them, how we relate to any Contemplative activity the labour and productiveness of the earth, how Nature, held to be devoid of reason and even of conscious representation, can either harbour Contemplation or produce by means of the Contemplation which it does not possess. Enneads III,8,

A possible solution may be offered: The unit soul holds aloof, not actually falling into body; the differentiated souls – the All-Soul, with the others – issue from the unity while still constituting, within certain limits, an association. They are one soul by the fact that they do not belong unreservedly to any particular being; they meet, so to speak, fringe to fringe; they strike out here and there, but are held together at the source much as light is a divided thing upon earth, shining in this house, and that, and yet remains uninterruptedly one identical substance. Enneads IV,3,

Firstly, there is the entry – metensomatosis – of a soul present in body by change from one [wholly material] frame to another or the entry – not known as metensomatosis, since the nature of the earlier habitacle is not certainly definable – of a soul leaving an aerial or fiery body for one of earth. Enneads IV,3,

The souls of men, seeing their images in the mirror of Dionysus as it were, have entered into that realm in a leap downward from the Supreme: yet even they are not cut off from their origin, from the divine Intellect; it is not that they have come bringing the Intellectual Principle down in their fall; it is that though they have descended even to earth, yet their higher part holds for ever above the heavens. Enneads IV,3,

Such a consonance can have been procured in one only way: The All must, in every detail of act and experience, be an expression of the Supreme, which must dominate alike its periods and its stable ordering and the life-careers varying with the movement of the souls as they are sometimes absorbed in that highest, sometimes in the heavens, sometimes turned to the things and places of our earth. All that is Divine Intellect will rest eternally above, and could never fall from its sphere but, poised entire in its own high place, will communicate to things here through the channel of Soul. Soul in virtue of neighbourhood is more closely modelled upon the Idea uttered by the Divine Intellect, and thus is able to produce order in the movement of the lower realm, one phase [the World-Soul] maintaining the unvarying march [of the kosmic circuit] the other [the soul of the Individual] adopting itself to times and season. Enneads IV,3,

Various considerations explain why the Souls going forth from the Intellectual proceed first to the heavenly regions. The heavens, as the noblest portion of sensible space, would border with the least exalted of the Intellectual, and will, therefore, be first ensouled first to participate as most apt; while what is of earth is at the very extremity of progression, least endowed towards participation, remotest from the unembodied. Enneads IV,3,

Now comes the question, equally calling for an answer, whether those souls that have quitted the places of earth retain memory of their lives – all souls or some, of all things, or of some things, and, again, for ever or merely for some period not very long after their withdrawal. Enneads IV,3,

What, then, will be the Soul’s discourse, what its memories in the Intellectual Realm, when at last it has won its way to that Essence? Obviously from what we have been saying, it will be in contemplation of that order, and have its Act upon the things among which it now is; failing such Contemplation and Act, its being is not there. Of things of earth it will know nothing; it will not, for example, remember an act of philosophic virtue, or even that in its earthly career it had contemplation of the Supreme. Enneads IV,4,

Well but can they not tell themselves that yesterday, or last year, they moved round the earth, that they lived yesterday or at any given moment in their lives? Their living is eternal, and eternity is an unchanging unity. To identify a yesterday or a last year in their movement would be like isolating the movement of one of the feet, and finding a this or a that and an entire series in what is a single act. The movement of the celestial beings is one movement: it is our measuring that presents us with many movements, and with distinct days determined by intervening nights: There all is one day; series has no place; no yesterday, no last year. Enneads IV,4,

And as regards vegetal forms? Are we to imagine beneath the leading principle [the "Nature" phase] some sort of corporeal echo of it, something that would be tendency or desire in us and is growth in them? Or are we to think that, while the earth [which nourishes them] contains the principle of desire by virtue of containing soul, the vegetal realm possesses only this latter reflection of desire? The first point to be decided is what soul is present in the earth. Enneads IV,4,

Is it one coming from the sphere of the All, a radiation upon earth from that which Plato seems to represent as the only thing possessing soul primarily? Or are we to go by that other passage where he describes earth as the first and oldest of all the gods within the scope of the heavens, and assigns to it, as to the other stars, a soul peculiar to itself? It is difficult to see how earth could be a god if it did not possess a soul thus distinct: but the whole matter is obscure since Plato’s statements increase or at least do not lessen the perplexity. It is best to begin by facing the question as a matter of reasoned investigation. Enneads IV,4,

That earth possesses the vegetal soul may be taken as certain from the vegetation upon it. But we see also that it produces animals; why then should we not argue that it is itself animated? And, animated, no small part of the All, must it not be plausible to assert that it possesses an Intellectual-Principle by which it holds its rank as a god? If this is true of every one of the stars, why should it not be so of the earth, a living part of the living All? We cannot think of it as sustained from without by an alien soul and incapable of containing one appropriate to itself. Enneads IV,4,

Why should those fiery globes be receptive of soul, and the earthly globe not? The stars are equally corporeal, and they lack the flesh, blood, muscle, and pliant material of earth, which, besides, is of more varied content and includes every form of body. If the earth’s immobility is urged in objection, the answer is that this refers only to spatial movement. Enneads IV,4,

But how can perception and sensation [implied in ensoulment] be supposed to occur in the earth? How do they occur in the stars? Feeling does not belong to fleshy matter: soul to have perception does not require body; body, on the contrary, requires soul to maintain its being and its efficiency, judgement [the foundation of perception] belongs to the soul which overlooks the body, and, from what is experienced there, forms its decisions. Enneads IV,4,

But, we will be asked to say what are the experiences, within the earth, upon which the earth-soul is thus to form its decisions: certainly vegetal forms, in so far as they belong to earth have no sensation or perception: in what then, and through what, does such sensation take place, for sensation without organs is too rash a notion. Besides, what would this sense-perception profit the soul? It could not be necessary to knowledge: surely the consciousness of wisdom suffices to beings which have nothing to gain from sensation? This argument is not to be accepted: it ignores the consideration that, apart from all question of practical utility, objects of sense provide occasion for a knowing which brings pleasure: thus we ourselves take delight in looking upon sun, stars, sky, landscape, for their own sake. But we will deal with this point later: for the present we ask whether the earth has perceptions and sensations, and if so through what vital members these would take place and by what method: this requires us to examine certain difficulties, and above all to decide whether earth could have sensation without organs, and whether this would be directed to some necessary purpose even when incidentally it might bring other results as well. Enneads IV,4,

At this, sense-impressions would aim at utility. They may serve also to knowledge, but that could be service only to some being not living in knowledge but stupefied as the result of a disaster, and the victim of a Lethe calling for constant reminding: they would be useless to any being free from either need or forgetfulness. This This reflection enlarges the enquiry: it is no longer a question of earth alone, but of the whole star-system, all the heavens, the kosmos entire. For it would follow that, in the sphere of things not exempt from modification, sense-perception would occur in every part having relation to any other part: in a whole, however – having relation only to itself, immune, universally self-directed and self-possessing – what perception could there be? Granted that the percipient must act through an organ and that this organ must be different from the object perceived, then the universe, as an All, can have [no sensation since it has] no organ distinct from object: it can have self-awareness, as we have; but sense-perception, the constant attendant of another order, it cannot have. Enneads IV,4,

Our own apprehension of any bodily condition apart from the normal is the sense of something intruding from without: but besides this, we have the apprehension of one member by another; why then should not the All, by means of what is stationary in it, perceive that region of itself which is in movement, that is to say the earth and the earth’s content? Things of earth are certainly affected by what passes in other regions of the All; what, then, need prevent the All from having, in some appropriate way, the perception of those changes? In addition to that self-contemplating vision vested in its stationary part, may it not have a seeing power like that of an eye able to announce to the All-Soul what has passed before it? Even granted that it is entirely unaffected by its lower, why, still, should it not see like an eye, ensouled as it is, all lightsome? Still: "eyes were not necessary to it," we read. If this meant simply that nothing is left to be seen outside of the All, still there is the inner content, and there can be nothing to prevent it seeing what constitutes itself: if the meaning is that such self-vision could serve to no use, we may think that it has vision not as a main intention for vision’s sake but as a necessary concomitant of its characteristic nature; it is difficult to conceive why such a body should be incapable of seeing. Enneads IV,4,

This seems to oblige us to accord sense-perception to the earth. Enneads IV,4,

And there is nothing against the idea that sensation in the earth exists for the sake of the human interests furthered by the earth. They would be served by means of the sympathy that has been mentioned; petitioners would be heard and their prayers met, though in a way not ours. And the earth, both in its own interest and in that of beings distinct from itself, might have the experiences of the other senses also – for example, smell and taste where, perhaps, the scent of juices or sap might enter into its care for animal life, as in the constructing or restoring of their bodily part. Enneads IV,4,

But we need not demand for earth the organs by which we, ourselves, act: not even all the animals have these; some, without ears perceive sound. Enneads IV,4,

For sight it would not need eyes – though if light is indispensable how can it see? That the earth contains the principle of growth must be admitted; it is difficult not to allow in consequence that, since this vegetal principle is a member of spirit, the earth is primarily of the spiritual order; and how can we doubt that in a spirit all is lucid? This becomes all the more evident when we reflect that, besides being as a spirit lightsome, it is physically illuminated moving in the light of kosmic revolution. Enneads IV,4,

There is, thus, no longer any absurdity or impossibility in the notion that the soul in the earth has vision: we must, further, consider that it is the soul of no mean body; that in fact it is a god since certainly soul must be everywhere good. Enneads IV,4,

If the earth transmits the generative soul to growing things – or retains it while allowing a vestige of it to constitute the vegetal principle in them – at once the earth is ensouled, as our flesh is, and any generative power possessed by the plant world is of its bestowing: this phase of the soul is immanent in the body of the growing thing, and transmits to it that better element by which it differs from the broken off part no longer a thing of growth but a mere lump of material. Enneads IV,4,

But does the entire body of the earth similarly receive anything from the soul? Yes: for we must recognize that earthly material broken off from the main body differs from the same remaining continuously attached; thus stones increase as long as they are embedded, and, from the moment they are separated, stop at the size attained. Enneads IV,4,

We must conclude, then, that every part and member of the earth carries its vestige of this principle of growth, an under-phase of that entire principle which belongs not to this or that member but to the earth as a whole: next in order is the nature [the soul-phase], concerned with sensation, this not interfused [like the vegetal principle] but in contact from above: then the higher soul and the Intellectual-Principle, constituting together the being known as Hestia [Earth-Mind] and Demeter [Earth-Soul] – a nomenclature indicating the human intuition of these truths, asserted in the attribution of a divine name and nature. Enneads IV,4,

It is obvious that, if they act on our prayers and if this action is not immediate, but with delay and after long periods of time, they remember the prayers men address to them. This is something that our former argument did not concede; though it appeared plausible that, for their better service of mankind, they might have been endowed with such a memory as we ascribed to Demeter and Hestia – or to the latter alone if only the earth is to be thought of as beneficent to man. Enneads IV,4,

When I speak of the act and experience of the All I mean the total effect of the entire kosmic circuit upon itself and upon its members: for by its motion it sets up certain states both within itself and upon its parts, upon the bodies that move within it and upon all that it communicates to those other parts of it, the things of our earth. Enneads IV,4,

The action of part upon part is manifest; there are the relations and operations of the sun, both towards the other spheres and towards the things of earth; and again relations among elements of the sun itself, of other heavenly bodies, of earthly things and of things in the other stars, demand investigation. Enneads IV,4,

Some such power, not necessarily accompanied by reason, every single item possesses; for each has been brought into being and into shape within a universe; each in its kind has partaken of soul through the medium of the ensouled All, as being embraced by that definitely constituted thing: each then is a member of an animate being which can include nothing that is less than a full member [and therefore a sharer in the total of power] – though one thing is of mightier efficacy than another, and, especially members of the heavenly system than the objects of earth, since they draw upon a purer nature – and these powers are widely productive. But productivity does not comport intention in what appears to be the source of the thing accomplished: there is efficacy, too, where there is no will: even attention is not necessary to the communication of power; the very transmission of soul may proceed without either. Enneads IV,4,

Life is also an Act, the Act of the soul, and it remains so when anything – the human body, for instance – comes in its path to be affected by it; and it is equally an Act though there be nothing for it to modify: surely this may be true of light, one of the Acts of whatever luminary source there be [i.e., light, affecting things, may be quite independent of them and require no medium, air or other]. Certainly light is not brought into being by the dark thing, air, which on the contrary tends to gloom it over with some touch of earth so that it is no longer the brilliant reality: as reasonable to talk of some substance being sweet because it is mixed with something bitter. Enneads IV,5,

If any one of them contains this ingrained life, that one is the soul. But what sort of an entity have we there; what is this body which of its own nature possesses soul? Fire, air, water, earth, are in themselves soulless – whenever soul is in any of them, that life is borrowed – and there are no other forms of body than these four: even the school that believes there are has always held them to be bodies, not souls, and to be without life. Enneads IV,7,

Let every soul recall, then, at the outset the truth that soul is the author of all living things, that it has breathed the life into them all, whatever is nourished by earth and sea, all the creatures of the air, the divine stars in the sky; it is the maker of the sun; itself formed and ordered this vast heaven and conducts all that rhythmic motion; and it is a principle distinct from all these to which it gives law and movement and life, and it must of necessity be more honourable than they, for they gather or dissolve as soul brings them life or abandons them, but soul, since it never can abandon itself, is of eternal being. Enneads: V I

How life was purveyed to the universe of things and to the separate beings in it may be thus conceived: That great soul must stand pictured before another soul, one not mean, a soul that has become worthy to look, emancipate from the lure, from all that binds its fellows in bewitchment, holding itself in quietude. Let not merely the enveloping body be at peace, body’s turmoil stilled, but all that lies around, earth at peace, and sea at peace, and air and the very heavens. Into that heaven, all at rest, let the great soul be conceived to roll inward at every point, penetrating, permeating, from all sides pouring in its light. As the rays of the sun throwing their brilliance upon a lowering cloud make it gleam all gold, so the soul entering the material expanse of the heavens has given life, has given immortality: what was abject it has lifted up; and the heavenly system, moved now in endless motion by the soul that leads it in wisdom, has become a living and a blessed thing; the soul domiciled within, it takes worth where, before the soul, it was stark body – clay and water – or, rather, the blankness of Matter, the absence of Being, and, as an author says, "the execration of the Gods." Enneads: V I

This, by which the gods are divine, must be the oldest God of them all: and our own soul is of that same Ideal nature, so that to consider it, purified, freed from all accruement, is to recognise in ourselves that same value which we have found soul to be, honourable above all that is bodily. For what is body but earth, and, taking fire itself, what [but soul] is its burning power? So it is with all the compounds of earth and fire, even with water and air added to them? If, then, it is the presence of soul that brings worth, how can a man slight himself and run after other things? You honour the Soul elsewhere; honour then yourself. Enneads: V I

Of course we do not pretend that the sun’s light [as the analogy might imply] remains a self-gathered and sun-centred thing: it is at once outrushing and indwelling; it strikes outward continuously, lap after lap, until it reaches us upon our earth: we must take it that all the light, including that which plays about the sun’s orb, has travelled; otherwise we would have a void expanse, that of the space – which is material – next to the sun’s orb. The Soul, on the contrary – a light springing from the Divine Mind and shining about it – is in closest touch with that source; it is not in transit but remains centred there, and, in likeness to that principle, it has no place: the light of the sun is actually in the air, but the soul is clean of all such contact so that its immunity is patent to itself and to any other of the same order. Enneads V,3,

For assuredly all the Gods are august and beautiful in a beauty beyond our speech. And what makes them so? Intellect; and especially Intellect operating within them [the divine sun and stars] to visibility. It is not through the loveliness of their corporeal forms: even those that have body are not gods by that beauty; it is in virtue of Intellect that they, too, are gods, and as gods beautiful. They do not veer between wisdom and folly: in the immunity of Intellect unmoving and pure, they are wise always, all-knowing, taking cognisance not of the human but of their own being and of all that lies within the contemplation of Intellect. Those of them whose dwelling is in the heavens, are ever in this meditation – what task prevents them? – and from afar they look, too, into that further heaven by a lifting of the head. The Gods belonging to that higher Heaven itself, they whose station is upon it and in it, see and know in virtue of their omnipresence to it. For all There is heaven; earth is heaven, and sea heaven; and animal and plant and man; all is the heavenly content of that heaven: and the Gods in it, despising neither men nor anything else that is there where all is of the heavenly order, traverse all that country and all space in peace. Enneads V,8,

The myth of Lynceus seeing into the very deeps of the earth tells us of those eyes in the divine. No weariness overtakes this vision, which yet brings no such satiety as would call for its ending; for there never was a void to be filled so that, with the fulness and the attainment of purpose, the sense of sufficiency be induced: nor is there any such incongruity within the divine that one Being there could be repulsive to another: and of course all There are unchangeable. This absence of satisfaction means only a satisfaction leading to no distaste for that which produces it; to see is to look the more, since for them to continue in the contemplation of an infinite self and of infinite objects is but to acquiesce in the bidding of their nature. Enneads V,8,

Consider the universe: we are agreed that its existence and its nature come to it from beyond itself; are we, now, to imagine that its maker first thought it out in detail – the earth, and its necessary situation in the middle; water and, again, its position as lying upon the earth; all the other elements and objects up to the sky in due place and order; living beings with their appropriate forms as we know them, their inner organs and their outer limbs – and that having thus appointed every item beforehand, he then set about the execution? Such designing was not even possible; how could the plan for a universe come to one that had never looked outward? Nor could he work on material gathered from elsewhere as our craftsmen do, using hands and tools; feet and hands are of the later order. Enneads V,8,

But – to our immediate purpose – it is possible to give a reason why the earth is set in the midst and why it is round and why the ecliptic runs precisely as it does, but, looking to the creating principle, we cannot say that because this was the way therefore things were so planned: we can say only that because the All is what it is, therefore there is a total of good; the causing principle, we might put it, reached the conclusion before all formal reasoning and not from any premises, not by sequence or plan but before either, since all of that order is later, all reason, demonstration, persuasion. Enneads V,8,

Let us, then, make a mental picture of our universe: each member shall remain what it is, distinctly apart; yet all is to form, as far as possible, a complete unity so that whatever comes into view shall show as if it were the surface of the orb over all, bringing immediately with it the vision, on the one plane, of the sun and of all the stars with earth and sea and all living things as if exhibited upon a transparent globe. Enneads V,8,

Forced of necessity to attend first to the material, some of them elect to abide by that order and, their life throughout, make its concerns their first and their last; the sweet and the bitter of sense are their good and evil; they feel they have done all if they live along pursuing the one and barring the doors to the other. And those of them that pretend to reasoning have adopted this as their philosophy; they are like the heavier birds which have incorporated much from the earth and are so weighted down that they cannot fly high for all the wings Nature has given them. Enneads V,8,

Others do indeed lift themselves a little above the earth; the better in their soul urges them from the pleasant to the nobler, but they are not of power to see the highest and so, in despair of any surer ground, they fall back in virtue’s name, upon those actions and options of the lower from which they sought to escape. Enneads V,8,

But there is a third order – those godlike men who, in their mightier power, in the keenness of their sight, have clear vision of the splendour above and rise to it from among the cloud and fog of earth and hold firmly to that other world, looking beyond all here, delighted in the place of reality, their native land, like a man returning after long wanderings to the pleasant ways of his own country. Enneads V,8,

Applying the same method to the total of things, here too we discover the Intellectual-Principle and this we set down as veritably the maker and creator of the All. The underly has adopted, we see, certain shapes by which it becomes fire, water, air, earth; and these shapes have been imposed upon it by something else. This other is Soul which, hovering over the Four [the elements], imparts the pattern of the Kosmos, the Ideas for which it has itself received from the Intellectual-Principle as the soul or mind of the craftsman draws upon his craft for the plan of his work. Enneads V,8,

Again, in the case of walking there is the earth trodden upon, but no one thinks of it as having experienced Passion [or suffering]. Treading on a living body, we think of suffering, because we reflect not upon the walking but upon the ensuing pain: otherwise we should think of suffering in the case of the tablet as well. Enneads: VI I

What, then, is the meaning of "existence" as applied to fire, earth and the other elements? What is the difference between this existence and existence in the other categories? It is the difference between being simply – that which merely is – and being white. But surely the being qualified by "white" is the same as that having no qualification? It is not the same: the latter is Being in the primary sense, the former is Being only by participation and in a secondary degree. Whiteness added to Being produces a being white; Being added to whiteness produces a white being: thus, whiteness becomes an accident of Being, and Being an accident of whiteness. Enneads VI,3,

Our plan must be to apprehend what is constant in stone, earth, water and the entities which they compose – the vegetal and animal forms, considered purely as sensibles – and to confine this constant within a single genus. Neither Matter nor Form will thus be overlooked, for Sensible Substance comports them; fire and earth and the two intermediaries consist of Matter and Form, while composite things are actually many substances in one. They all, moreover, have that common property which distinguishes them from other things: serving as subjects to these others, they are never themselves present in a subject nor predicated of any other thing. Similarly, all the characteristics which we have ascribed to Substance find a place in this classification. Enneads VI,3,

But what are we to posit as its species? how divide this genus? The genus as a whole must be identified with body. Bodies may be divided into the characteristically material and the organic: the material bodies comprise fire, earth, water, air; the organic the bodies of plants and animals, these in turn admitting of formal differentiation. Enneads VI,3,

The next step is to find the species of earth and of the other elements, and in the case of organic bodies to distinguish plants according to their forms, and the bodies of animals either by their habitations – on the earth, in the earth, and similarly for the other elements – or else as light, heavy and intermediate. Some bodies, we shall observe, stand in the middle of the universe, others circumscribe it from above, others occupy the middle sphere: in each case we shall find bodies different in shape, so that the bodies of the living beings of the heavens may be differentiated from those of the other elements. Enneads VI,3,

Another method of division is possible: substances may be classed as hot-dry, dry-cold, cold-moist, or however we choose to make the coupling. We may then proceed to the combination and blending of these couples, either halting at that point and going no further than the compound, or else subdividing by habitation – on the earth, in the earth – or by form and by the differences exhibited by living beings, not qua living, but in their bodies viewed as instruments of life. Enneads VI,3,

It is so with the lesser gods; of many standing in their presence it is often one alone that sees them; that one alone was alone in the power to see. These are the gods who "in many guises seek our cities"; but there is That Other whom the cities seek, and all the earth and heaven, everywhere with God and in Him, possessing through Him their Being and the Real Beings about them, down to soul and life, all bound to Him and so moving to that unity which by its very lack of extension is infinite. Enneads VI,5,

So much for the thing of sense; but it would appear that the prototype There of the living form, the universal horse, must look deliberately towards this sphere; and, that being so, the idea of horse must have been worked out in order there be a horse here? Yet what was that there to present the idea of the horse it was desired to produce? Obviously the idea of horse must exist before there was any planning to make a horse; it could not be thought of in order to be made; there must have been horse unproduced before that which was later to come into being. If, then, the thing existed before it was produced – if it cannot have been thought of in order to its production – the Being that held the horse as There held it in presence without any looking to this sphere; it was not with intent to set horse and the rest in being here that they were contained There; it is that, the universal existing, the reproduction followed of necessity since the total of things was not to halt at the Intellectual. Who was there to call a halt to a power capable at once of self-concentration and of outflow? But how come these animals of earth to be There? What have they to do within God? Reasoning beings, all very well; but this host of the unreasoning, what is there august in them? Surely the very contrary? The answer is that obviously the unity of our universe must be that of a manifold since it is subsequent to that unity-absolute; otherwise it would be not next to that but the very same thing. As a next it could not hold the higher rank of being more perfectly a unity; it must fall short: since the best is a unity, inevitably there must be something more than unity, for deficiency involves plurality. Enneads VI,7,

But earth; how is there earth There: what is the being of earth and how are we to represent to ourselves the living earth of that realm? First, what is it, what the mode of its being? Earth, here and There alike, must possess shape and a Reason-Principle. Now in the case of the vegetal, the Reason-Principle of the plant here was found to be living in that higher realm: is there such a Reason-Principle in our earth? Take the most earthy of things found shaped in earth and they exhibit, even they, the indwelling earth-principle. The growing and shaping of stones, the internal moulding of mountains as they rise, reveal the working of an ensouled Reason-Principle fashioning them from within and bringing them to that shape: this, we must take it, is the creative earth-principle corresponding to what we call the specific principle of a tree; what we know as earth is like the wood of the tree; to cut out a stone is like lopping a twig from a tree, except of course that there is no hurt done, the stone remaining a member of the earth as the twig, uncut, of the tree. Enneads VI,7,

Realizing thus that the creative force inherent in our earth is life within a Reason-Principle, we are easily convinced that the earth There is much more primally alive, that it is a reasoned Earth-Livingness, the earth of Real-Being, earth primally, the source of ours. Enneads VI,7,

Why, then, are water and air not ensouled as earth is? Now, it is quite certain that these are equally within the living total, parts of the living all; life does not appear visibly in them; but neither does it in the case of the earth where its presence is inferred by what earth produces: but there are living things in fire and still more manifestly in water and there are systems of life in the air. The particular fire, rising only to be quenched, eludes the soul animating the universe; it slips away from the magnitude which would manifest the soul within it; so with air and water. If these Kinds could somehow be fastened down to magnitude they would exhibit the soul within them, now concealed by the fact that their function requires them to be loose or flowing. It is much as in the case of the fluids within ourselves; the flesh and all that is formed out of the blood into flesh show the soul within, but the blood itself, not bringing us any sensation, seems not to have soul; yet it must; the blood is not subject to blind force; its nature obliges it to abstain from the soul which nonetheless is indwelling in it. This must be the case with the three elements; it is the fact that the living beings formed from the close conglomeration of air [the stars] are not susceptible to suffering. But just as air, so long as it remains itself, eludes the light which is and remains unyielding, so too, by the effect of its circular movement, it eludes soul – and, in another sense, does not. And so with fire and water. Enneads VI,7,

The sky There must be living and therefore not bare of stars, here known as the heavens – for stars are included in the very meaning of the word. Earth too will be There, and not void but even more intensely living and containing all that lives and moves upon our earth and the plants obviously rooted in life; sea will be There and all waters with the movement of their unending life and all the living things of the water; air too must be a member of that universe with the living things of air as here. Enneads VI,7,

The Intellectual-Principle is the Intellectual Act; its movement is complete, filling Being complete; And the entire of Being is the Intellectual Act entire, comprehending all life and the unfailing succession of things. Because this Principle contains Identity and Difference its division is ceaselessly bringing the different things to light. Its entire movement is through life and among living things. To a traveller over land, all is earth but earth abounding in difference: so in this journey the life through which Intellectual-Principle passes is one life but, in its ceaseless changing, a varied life. Enneads VI,7,

Our being is the fuller for our turning Thither; this is our prosperity; to hold aloof is loneliness and lessening. Here is the soul’s peace, outside of evil, refuge taken in the place clean of wrong; here it has its Act, its true knowing; here it is immune. Here is living, the true; that of to-day, all living apart from Him, is but a shadow, a mimicry. Life in the Supreme is the native activity of Intellect; in virtue of that converse it brings forth gods, brings forth beauty, brings forth righteousness, brings forth all moral good; for of all these the soul is pregnant when it has been filled with God. This state is its first and its final, because from God it comes, its good lies There, and, once turned to God again, it is what it was. Life here, with the things of earth, is a sinking, a defeat, a failing of the wing. Enneads VI,8,

But one day coming to hate her shame, she puts away the evil of earth, once more seeks the father, and finds her peace. Enneads VI,8,

This is the life of gods and of the godlike and blessed among men, liberation from the alien that besets us here, a life taking no pleasure in the things of earth, the passing of solitary to solitary. Enneads VI,8,