MacKenna-Plotinus: soul (Enneads II)

  

Every living thing is a combination of SOUL and body-kind: the celestial sphere, therefore, if it is to be everlasting as an individual entity must be so in virtue either of both these constituents or of one of them, by the combination of SOUL and body or by SOUL only or by body only. Enneads   II,1,2

Of course anyone that holds body to be incorruptible secures the desired permanence at once; no need, then, to call on a SOUL or on any perdurable conjunction to account for the continued maintenance of a living being. Enneads II,1,2

But the case is different when one holds that body is, of itself, perishable and that SOUL is the principle of permanence: this view obliges us to the proof that the character of body is not in itself fatal either to the coherence or to the lasting stability which are imperative: it must be shown that the two elements of the union envisaged are not inevitably hostile, but that on the contrary [in the heavens] even Matter must conduce to the scheme of the standing result. Enneads II,1,2

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,1,3

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,1,3

4. But matters are involved here which demand specific investigation and cannot be treated as incidental merely to our present problem. We are faced with several questions: Is the heavenly system exposed to any such flux as would occasion the need of some restoration corresponding to nourishment; or do its members, once set in their due places, suffer no loss of substance, permanent by Kind? Does it consist of fire only, or is it mainly of fire with the other elements, as well, taken up and carried in the circuit by the dominant Principle? Our doctrine of the immortality of the heavenly system rests on the firmest foundation once we have cited the sovereign agent, the SOUL, and considered, besides, the peculiar excellence of the bodily substance constituting the stars, a material so pure, so entirely the noblest, and chosen by the SOUL as, in all living beings, the determining principle appropriates to itself the choicest among their characteristic parts. No doubt Aristotle   is right in speaking of flame as a turmoil, fire insolently rioting; but the celestial fire is equable, placid, docile to the purposes of the stars. Enneads II,1,4

Still, the great argument remains, the SOUL, moving in its marvellous might second only to the very loftiest Existents: how could anything once placed within this SOUL break away from it into non-being? No one that understands this principle, the support of all things, can fail to see that, sprung from God, it is a stronger stay than any bonds. Enneads II,1,4

And is it conceivable that the SOUL, valid to sustain for a certain space of time, could not so sustain for ever? This would be to assume that it holds things together by violence; that there is a “natural course” at variance with what actually exists in the nature of the universe and in these exquisitely ordered beings; and that there is some power able to storm the established system and destroy its ordered coherence, some kingdom or dominion that may shatter the order founded by the SOUL. Enneads II,1,4

As to any alteration of purpose in the SOUL we have already shown the emptiness of that fancy: the administration of the universe entails neither labour nor loss; and, even supposing the possibility of annihilating all that is material, the SOUL would be no whit the better or the worse. Enneads II,1,4

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,1,5

A SOUL, then, of the minor degree reproducing, indeed, that of the Divine sphere but lacking in power inasmuch as it must exercise its creative act upon inferior stuff in an inferior region the substances taken up into the fabric being of themselves repugnant to duration; with such an origin the living things of this realm cannot be of strength to last for ever; the material constituents are not as firmly held and controlled as if they were ruled immediately by a Principle of higher potency. Enneads II,1,5

Our own case is different: physically we are formed by that [inferior] SOUL, given forth [not directly from God but] from the divine beings in the heavens and from the heavens themselves; it is by way of that inferior SOUL that we are associated with the body [which therefore will not be persistent]; for the higher SOUL which constitutes the We is the principle not of our existence but of our excellence or, if also of our existence, then only in the sense that, when the body is already constituted, it enters, bringing with it some effluence from the Divine Reason in support of the existence. Enneads II,1,5

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,1,6

8. Now: given a light of this degree, remaining in the upper sphere at its appointed station, pure light in purest place, what mode of outflow from it can be conceived possible? Such a Kind is not so constituted as to flow downwards of its own accord; and there exists in those regions no power to force it down. Again, body in contact with SOUL must always be very different from body left to itself; the bodily substance of the heavens has that contact and will show that difference. Enneads II,1,8

In sum, then, no outside body is necessary to the heavens to ensure their permanence or to produce their circular movement, for it has never been shown that their natural path would be the straight line; on the contrary the heavens, by their nature, will either be motionless or move by circle; all other movement indicates outside compulsion. We cannot think, therefore, that the heavenly bodies stand in need of replenishment; we must not argue from earthly frames to those of the celestial system whose sustaining SOUL is not the same, whose space is not the same, whose conditions are not those which make restoration necessary in this realm of composite bodies always in flux: we must recognise that the changes that take place in bodies here represent a slipping-away from the being [a phenomenon not incident to the celestial sphere] and take place at the dictate of a Principle not dwelling in the higher regions, one not powerful enough to ensure the permanence of the existences in which it is exhibited, one which in its coming into being and in its generative act is but an imitation of an antecedent Kind, and, as we have shown, cannot at every point possess the unchangeable identity of the Intellectual Realm. Enneads II,1,8

And does this movement belong to the material part or to the SOUL? Can we account for it on the ground that the SOUL has itself at once for centre and for the goal to which it must be ceaselessly moving; or that, being self-centred it is not of unlimited extension [and consequently must move ceaselessly to be omnipresent], and that its revolution carries the material mass with it? If the SOUL had been the moving power [by any such semi-physical action] it would be so no longer; it would have accomplished the act of moving and have brought the universe to rest; there would be an end of this endless revolution. Enneads II,2,1

In fact the SOUL must be in repose or at least cannot have spatial movement; how then, having itself a movement of quite another order, could it communicate spatial movement? But perhaps the circular movement [of the Kosmos as SOUL and body] is not spatial or is spatial not primarily but only incidentally. Enneads II,2,1

What, by this explanation, would be the essential movement of the kosmic SOUL? A movement towards itself, the movement of self-awareness, of self-intellection, of the living of its life, the movement of its reaching to all things so that nothing shall lie outside of it, nothing anywhere but within its scope. Enneads II,2,1

If the SOUL has no motion of any kind, it would not vitally compass the Kosmos nor would the Kosmos, a thing of body, keep its content alive, for the life of body is movement. Enneads II,2,1

Any spatial motion there is will be limited; it will be not that of SOUL untrammelled but that of a material frame ensouled, an animated organism; the movement will be partly of body, partly of SOUL, the body tending to the straight line which its nature imposes, the SOUL restraining it; the resultant will be the compromise movement of a thing at once carried forward and at rest. Enneads II,2,1

If, on the other hand, the Kosmic circuit is due to the SOUL, we are not to think of a painful driving [wearing it down at last]; the SOUL does not use violence or in any way thwart nature, for “Nature” is no other than the custom the All-Soul has established. Omnipresent in its entirety, incapable of division, the SOUL of the universe communicates that quality of universal presence to the heavens, too, in their degree, the degree, that is, of pursuing universality and advancing towards it. Enneads II,2,1

If the SOUL halted anywhere, there the Kosmos, too, brought so far, would halt: but the SOUL encompasses all, and so the Kosmos moves, seeking everything. Enneads II,2,1

Or, better; the SOUL is ceaselessly leading the Kosmos towards itself: the continuous attraction communicates a continuous movement not to some outside space but towards the SOUL and in the one sphere with it, not in the straight line [which would ultimately bring the moving body outside and below the SOUL], but in the curving course in which the moving body at every stage possesses the SOUL that is attracting it and bestowing itself upon it. Enneads II,2,1

If the SOUL were stationary, that is if [instead of presiding over a Kosmos] it dwelt wholly and solely in the realm in which every member is at rest, motion would be unknown; but, since the SOUL is not fixed in some one station There, the Kosmos must travel to every point in quest of it, and never outside it: in a circle, therefore. Enneads II,2,1

But if, wherever the circling body be, it possesses the SOUL, what need of the circling? Because everywhere it finds something else besides the SOUL [which it desires to possess alone]. Enneads II,2,2

The circular movement would be explained, too, if the SOUL’s power may be taken as resident at its centre. Enneads II,2,2

Here, however, we must distinguish between a centre in reference to the two different natures, body and SOUL. Enneads II,2,2

In body, centre is a point of place; in SOUL it is a source, the source of some other nature. The word, which without qualification would mean the midpoint of a spheric mass, may serve in the double reference; and, as in a material mass so in the SOUL, there must be a centre, that around which the object, SOUL or material mass, revolves. Enneads II,2,2

The SOUL exists in revolution around God to whom it clings in love, holding itself to the utmost of its power near to Him as the Being on which all depends; and since it cannot coincide with God it circles about Him. Enneads II,2,2

Why then do not all souls [i e, the lower, also, as those of men and animals] thus circle about the Godhead? Every SOUL does in its own rank and place. Enneads II,2,2

And it may very well be that even in us the Spirit which dwells with the SOUL does thus circle about the divinity. For since God is omnipresent the SOUL desiring perfect union must take the circular course: God is not stationed. Enneads II,2,2

3. 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,2,3

The lower SOUL is moved by the higher which, besides encircling and supporting it, actually resides in whatsoever part of it has thrust upwards and attained the spheres. The lower then, ringed round by the higher and answering its call, turns and tends towards it; and this upward tension communicates motion to the material frame in which it is involved: for if a single point in a spheric mass is in any degree moved, without being drawn away from the rest, it moves the whole, and the sphere is set in motion. Something of the same kind happens in the case of our bodies: the unspatial movement of the SOUL in happiness, for instance, or at the idea of some pleasant event sets up a spatial movement in the body: the SOUL, attaining in its own region some good which increases its sense of life, moves towards what pleases it; and so, by force of the union established in the order of nature, it moves the body, in the body’s region, that is in space. Enneads II,2,3

As for that phase of the SOUL in which sensation is vested, it, too, takes its good from the Supreme above itself and moves, rejoicingly, in quest of it: and since the object of its desire is everywhere, it too ranges always through the entire scope of the universe. Enneads II,2,3

2. Are these planets to be thought of as soulless or unsouled? Suppose them, first, to be without SOUL. Enneads II,3,2

8. SOUL, then, in the same way, is intent upon a task of its own; alike in its direct course and in its divagation it is the cause of all by its possession of the Thought of the First Principle: thus a Law of Justice goes with all that exists in the Universe which, otherwise, would be dissolved, and is perdurable because the entire fabric is guided as much by the orderliness as by the power of the controlling force. And in this order the stars, as being no minor members of the heavenly system, are co-operators contributing at once to its stately beauty and to its symbolic quality. Their symbolic power extends to the entire realm of sense, their efficacy only to what they patently do. Enneads II,3,8

For our part, nature keeps us upon the work of the SOUL as long as we are not wrecked in the multiplicity of the Universe: once thus sunk and held we pay the penalty, which consists both in the fall itself and in the lower rank thus entailed upon us: riches and poverty are caused by the combinations of external fact. Enneads II,3,8

And what of virtue and vice? That question has been amply discussed elsewhere: in a word, virtue is ours by the ancient staple of the SOUL; vice is due to the commerce of a SOUL with the outer world. Enneads II,3,8

In the Timaeus  , the creating God bestows the essential of the SOUL, but it is the divinities moving in the kosmos [the stars] that infuse the powerful affections holding from Necessity our impulse and our desire, our sense of pleasure and of pain and that lower phase of the SOUL in which such experiences originate. By this statement our personality is bound up with the stars, whence our SOUL [as total of Principle and affections] takes shape; and we are set under necessity at our very entrance into the world: our temperament will be of the stars’ ordering, and so, therefore, the actions which derive from temperament, and all the experiences of a nature shaped to impressions. Enneads II,3,9

Our task, then, is to work for our liberation from this sphere, severing ourselves from all that has gathered about us; the total man is to be something better than a body ensouled the bodily element dominant with a trace of SOUL running through it and a resultant life-course mainly of the body for in such a combination all is, in fact, bodily. There is another life, emancipated, whose quality is progression towards the higher realm, towards the good and divine, towards that Principle which no one possesses except by deliberate usage but so may appropriate, becoming, each personally, the higher, the beautiful, the Godlike, and living, remote, in and by It unless one choose to go bereaved of that higher SOUL and therefore, to live fate-bound, no longer profiting, merely, by the significance of the sidereal system but becoming as it were a part sunken in it and dragged along with the whole thus adopted. Enneads II,3,9

For every human Being is of twofold character; there is that compromise-total and there is the Authentic Man: and it is so with the Kosmos as a whole; it is in the one phase a conjunction of body with a certain form of the SOUL bound up in body; in the other phase it is the Universal SOUL, that which is not itself embodied but flashes down its rays into the embodied SOUL: and the same twofold quality belongs to the Sun and the other members of the heavenly system. Enneads II,3,9

To the remoter SOUL, the pure, sun and stars communicate no baseness. In their efficacy upon the [material] All, they act as parts of it, as ensouled bodies within it; and they act only upon what is partial; body is the agent while, at the same time, it becomes the vehicle through which is transmitted something of the star’s will and of that authentic SOUL in it which is steadfastly in contemplation of the Highest. Enneads II,3,9

But [with every allowance to the lower forces] all follows either upon that Highest or rather upon the Beings about It we may think of the Divine as a fire whose outgoing warmth pervades the Universe or upon whatsoever is transmitted by the one SOUL [the divine first SOUL] to the other, its Kin [the SOUL of any particular being]. All that is graceless is admixture. For the Universe is in truth a thing of blend, and if we separate from it that separable SOUL, the residue is little. The All is a God when the divine SOUL is counted in with it; “the rest,” we read, “is a mighty spirit and its ways are subdivine.” Enneads II,3,9

We must admit that the SOUL before entering into birth presents itself bearing with it something of its own, for it could never touch body except under stress of a powerful inner impulse; we must admit some element of chance around it from its very entry, since the moment and conditions are determined by the kosmic circuit: and we must admit some effective power in that circuit itself; it is co-operative, and completes of its own act the task that belongs to the All of which everything in the circuit takes the rank and function of a part. Enneads II,3,10

The gist of the whole matter lies in the consideration that SOUL governs this All by the plan contained in the Reason-Principle and plays in the All exactly the part of the particular principle which in every living-thing forms the members of the organism and adjusts them to the unity of which they are portions; the entire force of the SOUL is represented in the All, but, in the parts, SOUL is present only in proportion to the degree of essential reality held by each of such partial objects. Surrounding every separate entity there are other entities, whose approach will sometimes be hostile and sometimes helpful to the purpose of its nature; but to the All taken in its length and breadth each and every separate existent is an adjusted part, holding its own characteristic and yet contributing by its own native tendency to the entire life-history of the Universe. Enneads II,3,13

Secondary in the All are those of its parts which possess a less exalted nature just as in us the members rank lower than the SOUL; and so all through, there is a general analogy between the things of the All and our own members none of quite equal rank. Enneads II,3,13

It may set up some weakness restricted to the material frame. Or it may carry the weakness through to the sympathetic SOUL which by the medium of the material frame, become a power to debasement, has been delivered over, though never in its essence, to the inferior order of being. Or, in the case of a material frame ill-organized, it may check all such action [of the SOUL] upon the material frame as demands a certain collaboration in the part acted upon: thus a lyre may be so ill-strung as to be incapable of the melodic exactitude necessary to musical effect. Enneads II,3,13

Of men, some enter into life as fragments of the All, bound to that which is external to themselves: they are victims of a sort of fascination, and are hardly, or not at all, themselves: but others mastering all this straining, so to speak, by the head towards the Higher, to what is outside even the SOUL preserve still the nobility and the ancient privilege of the SOUL’s essential being. Enneads II,3,15

For certainly we cannot think of the SOUL as a thing whose nature is just a sum of impressions from outside as if it, alone, of all that exists, had no native character. Enneads II,3,15

No: much more than all else, the SOUL, possessing the Idea which belongs to a Principle, must have as its native wealth many powers serving to the activities of its Kind. It is an Essential-Existent and with this Existence must go desire and act and the tendency towards some good. Enneads II,3,15

While body and SOUL stand one combined thing, there is a joint nature, a definite entity having definite functions and employments; but as soon as any SOUL is detached, its employments are kept apart, its very own: it ceases to take the body’s concerns to itself: it has vision now: body and SOUL stand widely apart. Enneads II,3,15

16. The question arises what phase of the SOUL enters into the union for the period of embodiment and what phase remains distinct, what is separable and what necessarily interlinked, and in general what the Living-Being is. Enneads II,3,16

On all this there has been a conflict of teaching: the matter must be examined later on from quite other considerations than occupy us here. For the present let us explain in what sense we have described the All as the expressed idea of the Governing SOUL. Enneads II,3,16

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,3,16

Another view makes the SOUL answerable for all that thus comes about, since its first creations have set up the entire enchainment. Enneads II,3,16

No doubt the Reason-Principle [conveyed by the SOUL] covers all the action and experience of this realm: nothing happens, even here, by any form of haphazard; all follows a necessary order. Enneads II,3,16

Is everything, then, to be attributed to the act of the Reason-Principles? To their existence, no doubt, but not to their effective action; they exist and they know; or better, the SOUL, which contains the engendering Reason-Principle, knows the results of all it has brought to pass. For whensoever similar factors meet and act in relation to each other, similar consequences must inevitably ensue: the SOUL adopting or foreplanning the given conditions accomplishes the due outcome and links all into a total. Enneads II,3,16

But: The SOUL watches the ceaselessly changing universe and follows all the fate of all its works: this is its life, and it knows no respite from this care, but is ever labouring to bring about perfection, planning to lead all to an unending state of excellence like a farmer, first sowing and planting and then constantly setting to rights where rainstorms and long frosts and high gales have played havoc. Enneads II,3,16

If such a conception of SOUL be rejected as untenable, we are obliged to think that the Reason-Principles themselves foreknew or even contained the ruin and all the consequences of flaw. Enneads II,3,16

Well, perhaps even the less good has its contributory value in the All. Perhaps there is no need that everything be good. Contraries may co-operate; and without opposites there could be no ordered Universe: all living beings of the partial realm include contraries. The better elements are compelled into existence and moulded to their function by the Reason-Principle directly; the less good are potentially present in the Reason-Principles, actually present in the phenomena themselves; the SOUL’s power had reached its limit, and failed to bring the Reason-Principles into complete actuality since, amid the clash of these antecedent Principles, Matter had already from its own stock produced the less good. Enneads II,3,16

Yet, with all this, Matter is continuously overruled towards the better; so that out of the total of things modified by SOUL on the one hand and by Matter on the other hand, and on neither hand as sound as in the Reason-Principles there is, in the end, a Unity. Enneads II,3,16

17. But these Reason-Principles, contained in the SOUL, are they Thoughts? And if so, by what process does the SOUL create in accordance with these Thoughts? It is upon Matter that this act of the Reason is exercised; and what acts physically is not an intellectual operation or a vision, but a power modifying matter, not conscious of it but merely acting upon it: the Reason-Principle, in other words, acts much like a force producing a figure or pattern upon water that of a circle, suppose, where the formation of the ring is conditioned by something distinct from that force itself. Enneads II,3,17

If this is so, the prior puissance of the SOUL [that which conveys the Reason-Principles] must act by manipulating the other SOUL, that which is united with Matter and has the generative function. Enneads II,3,17

But is this handling the result of calculation? Calculation implies reference. Reference, then, to something outside or to something contained within itself? If to its own content, there is no need of reasoning, which could not itself perform the act of creation; creation is the operation of that phase of the SOUL which contains Ideal-Principles; for that is its stronger puissance, its creative part. Enneads II,3,17

In sum, then, the Intellectual-Principle gives from itself to the SOUL of the All which follows immediately upon it: this again gives forth from itself to its next, illuminated and imprinted by it; and that secondary SOUL at once begins to create, as under order, unhindered in some of its creations, striving in others against the repugnance of Matter. Enneads II,3,17

It has a creative power, derived; it is stored with Reason-Principles not the very originals: therefore it creates, but not in full accordance with the Principles from which it has been endowed: something enters from itself; and, plainly, this is inferior. The issue then is something living, yes; but imperfect, hindering its own life, something very poor and reluctant and crude, formed in a Matter that is the fallen sediment of the Higher Order, bitter and embittering. This is the SOUL’s contribution to the All. Enneads II,3,17

If all this is so, then [the secret of creation is that] the SOUL of the All abides in contemplation of the Highest and Best, ceaselessly striving towards the Intelligible Kind and towards God: but, thus absorbing and filled full, it overflows so to speak and the image it gives forth, its last utterance towards the lower, will be the creative puissance. Enneads II,3,18

This ultimate phase, then, is the Maker, secondary to that aspect of the SOUL which is primarily saturated from the Divine Intelligence. But the Creator above all is the Intellectual-Principle, as giver, to the SOUL that follows it, of those gifts whose traces exist in the Third Kind. Enneads II,3,18

For as long as divine Mind and SOUL exist, the divine Thought-Forms will pour forth into that phase of the SOUL: as long as there is a sun, all that streams from it will be some form of Light. Enneads II,3,18

3. Now it may be observed, first of all, that we cannot hold utterly cheap either the indeterminate, or even a Kind whose very idea implies absence of form, provided only that it offer itself to its Priors and [through them] to the Highest Beings. We have the parallel of the SOUL itself in its relation to the Intellectual-Principle and the Divine Reason, taking shape by these and led so to a nobler principle of form. Enneads II,4,3

There are no atoms; all body is divisible endlessly: besides neither the continuity nor the ductility of corporeal things is explicable apart from Mind, or apart from the SOUL which cannot be made up of atoms; and, again, out of atoms creation could produce nothing but atoms: a creative power could produce nothing from a material devoid of continuity. Any number of reasons might be brought, and have been brought, against this hypothesis and it need detain us no longer. Enneads II,4,7

What, then, is this indetermination in the SOUL? Does it amount to an utter absence of Knowledge, as if the SOUL or Mind had withdrawn? No: the indeterminate has some footing in the sphere of affirmation. The eye is aware of darkness as a base capable of receiving any colour not yet seen against it: so the Mind, putting aside all attributes perceptible to sense all that corresponds to light comes upon a residuum which it cannot bring under determination: it is thus in the state of the eye which, when directed towards darkness, has become in some way identical with the object of its spurious vision. Enneads II,4,10

There is vision, then, in this approach of the Mind towards Matter? Some vision, yes; of shapelessness, of colourlessness, of the unlit, and therefore of the sizeless. More than this would mean that the SOUL is already bestowing Form. Enneads II,4,10

But is not such a void precisely what the SOUL experiences when it has no intellection whatever? No: in that case it affirms nothing, or rather has no experience: but in knowing Matter, it has an experience, what may be described as the impact of the shapeless; for in its very consciousness of objects that have taken shape and size it knows them as compounds [i e, as possessing with these forms a formless base] for they appear as things that have accepted colour and other quality. Enneads II,4,10

And just as even Matter itself is not stably shapeless but, in things, is always shaped, the SOUL also is eager to throw over it the thing-form; for the SOUL recoils from the indefinite, dreads, almost, to be outside of reality, does not endure to linger about Non-Being. Enneads II,4,10

Now, to begin with: extension is not an imperative condition of being a recipient; it is necessary only where it happens to be a property inherent to the recipient’s peculiar mode of being. The SOUL, for example, contains all things but holds them all in an unextended unity; if magnitude were one of its attributes it would contain things in extension. Matter does actually contain in spatial extension what it takes in; but this is because itself is a potential recipient of spatial extension: animals and plants, in the same way, as they increase in size, take quality in parallel development with quantity, and they lose in the one as the other lessens. Enneads II,4,11

But I prefer to use the word phantasm as hinting the indefiniteness into which the SOUL spills itself when it seeks to communicate with Matter, finding no possibility of delimiting it, neither encompassing it nor able to penetrate to any fixed point of it, either of which achievements would be an act of delimitation. Enneads II,4,11

But these Ideas enter, not into Magnitude itself but into some subject that has been brought to Magnitude. For to suppose them entering into Magnitude and not into Matter is to represent them as being either without Magnitude and without Real-Existence [and therefore undistinguishable from the Matter] or not Ideal-Forms [apt to body] but Reason-Principles [utterly removed] whose sphere could only be SOUL; at this, there would be no such thing as body [i e, instead of Ideal-Forms shaping Matter and so producing body, there would be merely Reason-Principles dwelling remote in SOUL.] Enneads II,4,12

Those, however, who assert Matter in the Intellectual Realm will be asked whether the existence of that Matter does not imply the potential there too; for even if Matter there exists in another mode than here, every Being there will have its Matter, its form and the union of the two [and therefore the potential, separable from the actual]. What answer is to be made? Simply, that even the Matter there is Idea, just as the SOUL, an Idea, is Matter to another [a higher] Being. Enneads II,5,3

But relatively to that higher, the SOUL is a potentiality? No: for the Idea [to which it is Matter] is integral to the SOUL and does not look to a future; the distinction between the SOUL and its Idea is purely mental: the Idea and the Matter it includes are conceived as a conjunction but are essentially one Kind: remember that Aristotle makes his Fifth Body immaterial. Enneads II,5,3

But surely Potentiality exists in the SOUL? Surely the SOUL is potentially the living-being of this world before it has become so? Is it not potentially musical, and everything else that it has not been and becomes? Does not this imply potentiality even in the Intellectual Existences? No: the SOUL is not potentially these things; it is a Power towards them. Enneads II,5,3

This applies equally to the SOUL, not to that in Matter but to that in the Intellectual Sphere; and even that in Matter, the SOUL of Growth, is an actualization in its difference; it possesses actually [and not, like material things, merely in image] the Being that belongs to it. Enneads II,5,3

Then, everything, in the intellectual is in actualization and so all There is Actuality? Why not? If that Nature is rightly said to be “Sleepless,” and to be Life and the noblest mode of Life, the noblest Activities must be there; all then is actualization there, everything is an Actuality, for everything is a Life, and all Place there is the Place of Life, in the true sense the ground and spring of SOUL and of the Intellectual Principle. Enneads II,5,3

In other words, qualification may be distinguished. We may think of a qualification that is of the very substance of the thing, something exclusively belonging to it. And there is a qualifying that is nothing more, [not constituting but simply] giving some particular character to the real thing; in this second case the qualification does not produce any alteration towards Reality or away from it; the Reality has existed fully constituted before the incoming of the qualification which whether in SOUL or body merely introduces some state from outside, and by this addition elaborates the Reality into the particular thing. Enneads II,6,1

We need not, then, go seeking any other Principles; this the One and the Good is our First; next to it follows the Intellectual Principle, the Primal Thinker; and upon this follows SOUL. Such is the order in nature. The Intellectual Realm allows no more than these and no fewer. Enneads II,9,1

Those who hold to fewer Principles must hold the identity of either Intellectual-Principle and SOUL or of Intellectual-Principle and The First; but we have abundantly shown that these are distinct. Enneads II,9,1

They will scarcely urge upon us the doubling of the Principle in Act by a Principle in Potentiality. It is absurd to seek such a plurality by distinguishing between potentiality and actuality in the case of immaterial beings whose existence is in Act even in lower forms no such division can be made and we cannot conceive a duality in the Intellectual-Principle, one phase in some vague calm, another all astir. Under what form can we think of repose in the Intellectual Principle as contrasted with its movement or utterance? What would the quiescence of the one phase be as against the energy of the others? No: the Intellectual-Principle is continuously itself, unchangeably constituted in stable Act. With movement towards it or within it we are in the realm of the SOUL’s operation: such act is a Reason-Principle emanating from it and entering into SOUL, thus made an Intellectual SOUL, but in no sense creating an intermediate Principle to stand between the two. Enneads II,9,1

To increase the Primals by making the Supreme Mind engender the Reason-Principle, and this again engender in the SOUL a distinct power to act as mediator between SOUL and the Supreme Mind, this is to deny intellection to the SOUL, which would no longer derive its Reason from the Intellectual-Principle but from an intermediate: the SOUL then would possess not the Reason-Principle but an image of it: the SOUL could not know the Intellectual-Principle; it could have no intellection. Enneads II,9,1

And as to our own SOUL we are to hold that it stands, in part, always in the presence of The Divine Beings, while in part it is concerned with the things of this sphere and in part occupies a middle ground. It is one nature in graded powers; and sometimes the SOUL in its entirety is borne along by the loftiest in itself and in the Authentic Existent; sometimes, the less noble part is dragged down and drags the mid-soul with it, though the law is that the SOUL may never succumb entire. Enneads II,9,2

The SOUL’s disaster falls upon it when it ceases to dwell in the perfect Beauty the appropriate dwelling-place of that SOUL which is no part and of which we too are no part thence to pour forth into the frame of the All whatsoever the All can hold of good and beauty. There that SOUL rests, free from all solicitude, not ruling by plan or policy, not redressing, but establishing order by the marvellous efficacy of its contemplation of the things above it. Enneads II,9,2

Our fire, however, is a thing of limited scope: given powers that have no limitation and are never cut off from the Authentic Existences, how imagine anything existing and yet failing to receive from them? It is of the essence of things that each gives of its being to another: without this communication, The Good would not be Good, nor the Intellectual-Principle an Intellective Principle, nor would SOUL itself be what it is: the law is, “some life after the Primal Life, a second where there is a first; all linked in one unbroken chain; all eternal; divergent types being engendered only in the sense of being secondary.” Enneads II,9,3

4. 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,9,4

Finally, if the SOUL created by policy and not by sheer need of its nature, by being characteristically the creative power how explain the making of this universe? And when will it destroy the work? If it repents of its work, what is it waiting for? If it has not yet repented, then it will never repent: it must be already accustomed to the world, must be growing more tender towards it with the passing of time. Enneads II,9,4

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,9,5

Equally unreasonable is their introduction of that other SOUL which they piece together from the elements. Enneads II,9,5

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,9,5

6. And, what are we to think of the new forms of being they introduce their “Exiles” and “Impressions” and “Repentings”? If all comes to states of the SOUL “Repentance” when it has undergone a change of purpose; “Impressions” when it contemplates not the Authentic Existences but their simulacra there is nothing here but a jargon invented to make a case for their school: all this terminology is piled up only to conceal their debt to the ancient Greek philosophy which taught, clearly and without bombast, the ascent from the cave and the gradual advance of souls to a truer and truer vision. Enneads II,9,6

From Plato come their punishments, their rivers of the underworld and the changing from body to body; as for the plurality they assert in the Intellectual Realm the Authentic Existent, the Intellectual-Principle, the Second Creator and the SOUL all this is taken over from the Timaeus, where we read: “As many Ideal-Forms as the Divine Mind beheld dwelling within the Veritably Living Being, so many the Maker resolved should be contained in this All.” Enneads II,9,6

Misunderstanding their text, they conceived one Mind passively including within itself all that has being, another mind, a distinct existence, having vision, and a third planning the Universe though often they substitute SOUL for this planning Mind as the creating Principle and they think that this third being is the Creator according to Plato. Enneads II,9,6

They hope to get the credit of minute and exact identification by setting up a plurality of intellectual Essences; but in reality this multiplication lowers the Intellectual Nature to the level of the Sense-Kind: their true course is to seek to reduce number to the least possible in the Supreme, simply referring all things to the Second Hypostasis which is all that exists as it is Primal Intellect and Reality and is the only thing that is good except only for the first Nature and to recognize SOUL as the third Principle, accounting for the difference among souls merely by diversity of experience and character. Instead of insulting those venerable teachers they should receive their doctrine with the respect due to the older thought and honour all that noble system an immortal SOUL, an Intellectual and Intelligible Realm, the Supreme God, the SOUL’s need of emancipation from all intercourse with the body, the fact of separation from it, the escape from the world of process to the world of essential-being. These doctrines, all emphatically asserted by Plato, they do well to adopt: where they differ, they are at full liberty to speak their minds, but not to procure assent for their own theories by flaying and flouting the Greeks: where they have a divergent theory to maintain they must establish it by its own merits, declaring their own opinions with courtesy and with philosophical method and stating the controverted opinion fairly; they must point their minds towards the truth and not hunt fame by insult, reviling and seeking in their own persons to replace men honoured by the fine intelligences of ages past. Enneads II,9,6

As a matter of fact the ancient doctrine of the Divine Essences was far the sounder and more instructed, and must be accepted by all not caught in the delusions that beset humanity: it is easy also to identify what has been conveyed in these later times from the ancients with incongruous novelties how for example, where they must set up a contradictory doctrine, they introduce a medley of generation and destruction, how they cavil at the Universe, how they make the SOUL blameable for the association with body, how they revile the Administrator of this All, how they ascribe to the Creator, identified with the SOUL, the character and experiences appropriate to partial be beings. Enneads II,9,6

7. That this world has neither beginning nor end but exists for ever as long as the Supreme stands is certainly no novel teaching. And before this school rose it had been urged that commerce with the body is no gain to a SOUL. Enneads II,9,7

But to treat the human SOUL as a fair presentment of the SOUL of the Universe is like picking out potters and blacksmiths and making them warrant for discrediting an entire well-ordered city. Enneads II,9,7

We must recognize how different is the governance exercised by the All-Soul; the relation is not the same: it is not in fetters. Among the very great number of differences it should not have been overlooked that the We [the human SOUL] lies under fetter; and this in a second limitation, for the Body-Kind, already fettered within the All-Soul, imprisons all that it grasps. Enneads II,9,7

But the SOUL of the Universe cannot be in bond to what itself has bound: it is sovereign and therefore immune of the lower things, over which we on the contrary are not masters. That in it which is directed to the Divine and Transcendent is ever unmingled, knows no encumbering; that in it which imparts life to the body admits nothing bodily to itself. It is the general fact that an inset [as the Body], necessarily shares the conditions of its containing principle [as the SOUL], and does not communicate its own conditions where that principle has an independent life: thus a graft will die if the stock dies, but the stock will live on by its proper life though the graft wither. The fire within your own self may be quenched, but the thing, fire, will exist still; and if fire itself were annihilated that would make no difference to the SOUL, the SOUL in the Supreme, but only to the plan of the material world; and if the other elements sufficed to maintain a Kosmos, the SOUL in the Supreme would be unconcerned. Enneads II,9,7

The constitution of the All is very different from that of the single, separate forms of life: there, the established rule commanding to permanence is sovereign; here things are like deserters kept to their own place and duty by a double bond; there is no outlet from the All, and therefore no need of restraining or of driving errants back to bounds: all remains where from the beginning the SOUL’s nature appointed. Enneads II,9,7

8. To ask why the SOUL has created the Kosmos, is to ask why there is a SOUL and why a Creator creates. The question, also, implies a beginning in the eternal and, further, represents creation as the act of a changeful Being who turns from this to that. Enneads II,9,8

We must recognize that other men have attained the heights of goodness; we must admit the goodness of the celestial spirits, and above all of the gods those whose presence is here but their contemplation in the Supreme, and loftiest of them, the lord of this All, the most blessed SOUL. Rising still higher, we hymn the divinities of the Intellectual Sphere, and, above all these, the mighty King of that dominion, whose majesty is made patent in the very multitude of the gods. Enneads II,9,9

The more perfect the man, the more compliant he is, even towards his fellows; we must temper our importance, not thrusting insolently beyond what our nature warrants; we must allow other beings, also, their place in the presence of the Godhead; we may not set ourselves alone next after the First in a dream-flight which deprives us of our power of attaining identity with the Godhead in the measure possible to the human SOUL, that is to say, to the point of likeness to which the Intellectual-Principle leads us; to exalt ourselves above the Intellectual-Principle is to fall from it. Enneads II,9,9

They first maintain that the SOUL and a certain “Wisdom” [Sophia] declined and entered this lower sphere though they leave us in doubt of whether the movement originated in SOUL or in this Sophia of theirs, or whether the two are the same to them then they tell us that the other Souls came down in the descent and that these members of Sophia took to themselves bodies, human bodies, for example. Enneads II,9,10

Yet in the same breath, that very SOUL which was the occasion of descent to the others is declared not to have descended. “It knew no decline,” but merely illuminated the darkness in such a way that an image of it was formed upon the Matter. Then, they shape an image of that image somewhere below through the medium of Matter or of Materiality or whatever else of many names they choose to give it in their frequent change of terms, invented to darken their doctrine and so they bring into being what they call the Creator or Demiurge, then this lower is severed from his Mother [Sophia] and becomes the author of the Kosmos down to the latest of the succession of images constituting it. Enneads II,9,10

11. Now, in the first place, if the SOUL has not actually come down but has illuminated the darkness, how can it truly be said to have declined? The outflow from it of something in the nature of light does not justify the assertion of its decline; for that, it must make an actual movement towards the object lying in the lower realm and illuminate it by contact. Enneads II,9,11

If, on the other hand, the SOUL keeps to its own place and illuminates the lower without directing any act towards that end, why should it alone be the illuminant? Why should not the Kosmos draw light also from the yet greater powers contained in the total of existence? Again, if the SOUL possesses the plan of a Universe, and by virtue of this plan illuminates it, why do not that illumination and the creating of the world take place simultaneously? Why must the SOUL wait till the representations of the plan be made actual? Then again this Plan the “Far Country” of their terminology brought into being, as they hold, by the greater powers, could not have been the occasion of decline to the creators. Enneads II,9,11

Further, how explain that under this illumination the Matter of the Kosmos produces images of the order of SOUL instead of mere bodily-nature? An image of SOUL could not demand darkness or Matter, but wherever formed it would exhibit the character of the producing element and remain in close union with it. Enneads II,9,11

Next, is this image a real-being, or, as they say, an Intellection? If it is a reality, in what way does it differ from its original? By being a distinct form of the SOUL? But then, since the original is the reasoning SOUL, this secondary form must be the vegetative and generative SOUL; and then, what becomes of the theory that it is produced for glory’s sake, what becomes of the creation in arrogance and self-assertion? The theory puts an end also to creation by representation and, still more decidedly, to any thinking in the act; and what need is left for a creator creating by way of Matter and Image? If it is an Intellection, then we ask first “What justifies the name?” and next, “How does anything come into being unless the SOUL give this Intellection creative power and how, after all, can creative power reside in a created thing?” Are we to be told that it is a question of a first Image followed by a second? But this is quite arbitrary. Enneads II,9,11

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,9,12

Why should this down-shining take place unless such a process belonged to a universal law? Either the process is in the order of Nature or against that order. If it is in the nature of things, it must have taken place from eternity; if it is against the nature of things, then the breach of natural right exists in the Supreme also; evil antedates this world; the cause of evil is not the world; on the contrary the Supreme is the evil to us; instead of the SOUL’s harm coming from this sphere, we have this Sphere harmed by the SOUL. Enneads II,9,12

The SOUL that declined, they tell us, saw and illuminated the already existent Darkness. Now whence came that Darkness? If they tell us that the SOUL created the Darkness by its Decline, then, obviously, there was nowhere for the SOUL to decline to; the cause of the decline was not the Darkness but the very nature of the SOUL. The theory, therefore, refers the entire process to pre-existing compulsions: the guilt inheres in the Primal Beings. Enneads II,9,12

And what, after all, is there so terrible in these Spheres with which it is sought to frighten people unaccustomed to thinking, never trained in an instructive and coherent gnosis? Even the fact that their material frame is of fire does not make them dreadful; their Movements are in keeping with the All and with the Earth: but what we must consider in them is the SOUL, that on which these people base their own title to honour. Enneads II,9,13

Once more, we have no right to ask that all men shall be good, or to rush into censure because such universal virtue is not possible: this would be repeating the error of confusing our sphere with the Supreme and treating evil as a nearly negligible failure in wisdom as good lessened and dwindling continuously, a continuous fading out; it would be like calling the Nature-Principle evil because it is not Sense-Perception and the thing of sense evil for not being a Reason-Principle. If evil is no more than that, we will be obliged to admit evil in the Supreme also, for there, too, SOUL is less exalted than the Intellectual-Principle, and That too has its Superior. Enneads II,9,13

In the sacred formulas they inscribe, purporting to address the Supernal Beings not merely the SOUL but even the Transcendents they are simply uttering spells and appeasements and evocations in the idea that these Powers will obey a call and be led about by a word from any of us who is in some degree trained to use the appropriate forms in the appropriate way certain melodies, certain sounds, specially directed breathings, sibilant cries, and all else to which is ascribed magic potency upon the Supreme. Perhaps they would repudiate any such intention: still they must explain how these things act upon the unembodied: they do not see that the power they attribute to their own words is so much taken away from the majesty of the divine. Enneads II,9,14

This school, in fact, is convicted by its neglect of all mention of virtue: any discussion of such matters is missing utterly: we are not told what virtue is or under what different kinds it appears; there is no word of all the numerous and noble reflections upon it that have come down to us from the ancients; we do not learn what constitutes it or how it is acquired, how the SOUL is tended, how it is cleaned. For to say “Look to God” is not helpful without some instruction as to what this looking imports: it might very well be said that one can “look” and still sacrifice no pleasure, still be the slave of impulse, repeating the word God but held in the grip of every passion and making no effort to master any. Virtue, advancing towards the Term and, linked with thought, occupying a SOUL makes God manifest: God on the lips, without a good conduct of life, is a word. Enneads II,9,15

Besides, in this slighting of the Mundane Gods and the world, the honour they profess for the gods of the Intellectual Sphere becomes an inconsistency; Where we love, our hearts are warm also to the Kin of the beloved; we are not indifferent to the children of our friend. Now every SOUL is a child of that Father; but in the heavenly bodies there are Souls, intellective, holy, much closer to the Supernal Beings than are ours; for how can this Kosmos be a thing cut off from That and how imagine the gods in it to stand apart? But of this matter we have treated elsewhere: here we urge that where there is contempt for the Kin of the Supreme the knowledge of the Supreme itself is merely verbal. Enneads II,9,16

17. Perhaps the hate of this school for the corporeal is due to their reading of Plato who inveighs against body as a grave hindrance to SOUL and pronounces the corporeal to be characteristically the inferior. Enneads II,9,17

They will think of the Intellectual Sphere which includes within itself the Ideal-Form realized in the Kosmos. They will think of the Souls, in their ordered rank, that produce incorporeal magnitude and lead the Intelligible out towards spatial extension, so that finally the thing of process becomes, by its magnitude, as adequate a representation as possible of the principle void of parts which is its model the greatness of power there being translated here into greatness of bulk. Then whether they think of the Kosmic Sphere [the All-Soul] as already in movement under the guidance of that power of God which holds it through and through, beginning and middle and end, or whether they consider it as in rest and exercising as yet no outer governance: either approach will lead to a true appreciation of the SOUL that conducts this Universe. Enneads II,9,17

Now let them set body within it not in the sense that SOUL suffers any change but that, since “In the Gods there can be no grudging,” it gives to its inferior all that any partial thing has strength to receive and at once their conception of the Kosmos must be revised; they cannot deny that the SOUL of the Kosmos has exercised such a weight of power as to have brought the corporeal-principle, in itself unlovely, to partake of good and beauty to the utmost of its receptivity and to a pitch which stirs Souls, beings of the divine order. Enneads II,9,17

And even for its SOUL no one could imagine any such a path of process: or, if this were conceded, certainly it could not be towards evil. Enneads II,9,17

18. But perhaps this school will maintain that, while their teaching leads to a hate and utter abandonment of the body, ours binds the SOUL down in it. Enneads II,9,18

In other words: two people inhabit the one stately house; one of them declaims against its plan and against its Architect, but none the less maintains his residence in it; the other makes no complaint, asserts the entire competency of the Architect and waits cheerfully for the day when he may leave it, having no further need of a house: the malcontent imagines himself to be the wiser and to be the readier to leave because he has learned to repeat that the walls are of soulless stone and timber and that the place falls far short of a true home; he does not see that his only distinction is in not being able to bear with necessity assuming that his conduct, his grumbling, does not cover a secret admiration for the beauty of those same “stones.” As long as we have bodies we must inhabit the dwellings prepared for us by our good sister the SOUL in her vast power of labourless creation. Enneads II,9,18

Or would this school reject the word Sister? They are willing to address the lowest of men as brothers; are they capable of such raving as to disown the tie with the Sun and the powers of the Heavens and the very SOUL of the Kosmos? Such kinship, it is true, is not for the vile; it may be asserted only of those that have become good and are no longer body but embodied SOUL and of a quality to inhabit the body in a mode very closely resembling the indwelling. of the All-Soul in the universal frame. And this means continence, self-restraint, holding staunch against outside pleasure and against outer spectacle, allowing no hardship to disturb the mind. The All-Soul is immune from shock; there is nothing that can affect it: but we, in our passage here, must call on virtue in repelling these assaults, reduced for us from the beginning by a great conception of life, annulled by matured strength. Enneads II,9,18

Attaining to something of this immunity, we begin to reproduce within ourselves the SOUL of the vast All and of the heavenly bodies: when we are come to the very closest resemblance, all the effort of our fervid pursuit will be towards that goal to which they also tend; their contemplative vision becomes ours, prepared as we are, first by natural disposition and afterwards by all this training, for that state which is theirs by the Principle of their Being. Enneads II,9,18