MacKenna-Plotinus: soul (Enneads VI)

  

With regard to time, if it is to be thought of as a measure, we must determine what it is that applies this measure. It must clearly be either SOUL or the Present Moment. If on the contrary we take time to be something measured and regard it as being of such and such extension a year, for example then we may consider it as a quantity: essentially however time is of a different nature; the very fact that we can attribute this or that length to it shows us that it is not length: in other words, time is not Quantity. Quantity in the strict sense is the Quantity not inbound with things; if things became quantities by mere participation in Quantity, then Substance itself would be identical with Quantity. Enneads   VI,1,4

It need hardly be said that we are not to affirm Relation where one thing is simply an attribute of another, as a habit is an attribute of a SOUL or of a body; it is not Relation when a SOUL belongs to this individual or dwells in that body. Relation enters only when the actuality of the relationships is derived from no other source than Relation itself; the actuality must be, not that which is characteristic of the substances in question, but that which is specifically called relative. Thus double with its correlative, half gives actuality neither to two yards’ length or the number two, nor to one yard’s length or the number one; what happens is that, when these quantities are viewed in their relation, they are found to be not merely two and one respectively, but to produce the assertion and to exhibit the fact of standing one to the other in the condition of double and half. Out of the objects in a certain conjunction this condition of being double and half has issued as something distinct from either; double and half have emerged as correlatives, and their being is precisely this of mutual dependence; the double exists by its superiority over the half, and the half by its inferiority; there is no priority to distinguish double from half; they arise simultaneously. Enneads VI,1,7

Qualities in the true sense those, that is, which determine qualia being in accordance with our definition powers, will in virtue of this common ground be a kind of Reason-Principle; they will also be in a sense Forms, that is, excellences and imperfections whether of SOUL or of body. Enneads VI,1,10

But how can they all be powers? Beauty or health of SOUL or body, very well: but surely not ugliness, disease, weakness, incapacity. In a word, is powerlessness a power? It may be urged that these are qualities in so far as qualia are also named after them: but may not the qualia be so called by analogy, and not in the strict sense of the single principle? Not only may the term be understood in the four ways [of Aristotle  ], but each of the four may have at least a twofold significance. Enneads VI,1,10

12. If then we do not propose to divide Quality in this [fourfold] manner, what basis of division have we? We must examine whether qualities may not prove to be divisible on the principle that some belong to the body and others to the SOUL. Those of the body would be subdivided according to the senses, some being attributed to sight, others to hearing and taste, others to smell and touch. Those of the SOUL would presumably be allotted to appetite, emotion, reason; though, again, they may be distinguished by the differences of the activities they condition, in so far as activities are engendered by these qualities; or according as they are beneficial or injurious, the benefits and injuries being duly classified. This last is applicable also to the classification of bodily qualities, which also produce differences of benefit and injury: these differences must be regarded as distinctively qualitative; for either the benefit and injury are held to be derived from Quality and the quale, or else some other explanation must be found for them. Enneads VI,1,12

It may however be urged that while the possession of that character makes it a quale, it is a relative in so far as it directs upon an external object the power indicated by its name. Why, then, is not “boxer” a relative, and “boxing” as well? Boxing is entirely related to an external object; its whole theory pre-supposes this external. And in the case of the other arts or most of them investigation would probably warrant the assertion that in so far as they affect the SOUL they are qualities, while in so far as they look outward they are active and as being directed to an external object are relatives. They are relatives in the other sense also that they are thought of as habits. Enneads VI,1,12

17. We may be told that neither Act nor Motion requires a genus for itself, but that both revert to Relation, Act belonging to the potentially active, Motion to the potentially motive. Our reply is that Relation produces relatives as such, and not the mere reference to an external standard; given the existence of a thing, whether attributive or relative, it holds its essential character prior to any relationship: so then must Act and Motion, and even such an attribute as habit; they are not prevented from being prior to any relationship they may occupy, or from being conceivable in themselves. Otherwise, everything will be relative; for anything you think of even SOUL bears some relationship to something else. Enneads VI,1,17

But is it not a paradox that, while Matter, the Substrate, is to them an existence, bodies should not have more claim to existence, the universe yet more, and not merely a claim grounded on the reality of one of its parts? It is no less paradoxical that the living form should owe existence not to its SOUL but to its Matter only, the SOUL being but an affection of Matter and posterior to it. From what source then did Matter receive ensoulment? Whence, in short, is SOUL’s entity derived? How does it occur that Matter sometimes turns into bodies, while another part of it turns into SOUL? Even supposing that Form might come to it from elsewhere, that accession of Quality to Matter would account not for SOUL, but simply for organized body soulless. If, on the contrary, there is something which both moulds Matter and produces SOUL, then prior to the produced there must be SOUL the producer. Enneads VI,1,27

Matter then is the sole Reality. But how do we come to know this? Certainly not from Matter itself. How, then? From Intellect? But Intellect is merely a state of Matter, and even the “state” is an empty qualification. We are left after all with Matter alone competent to make these assertions, to fathom these problems. And if its assertions were intelligent, we must wonder how it thinks and performs the functions of SOUL without possessing either Intellect or SOUL. If, then, it were to make foolish assertions, affirming itself to be what it is not and cannot be, to what should we ascribe this folly? Doubtless to Matter, if it was in truth Matter that spoke. But Matter does not speak; anyone who says that it does proclaims the predominance of Matter in himself; he may have a SOUL, but he is utterly devoid of Intellect, and lives in ignorance of himself and of the faculty alone capable of uttering the truth in these things. Enneads VI,1,29

Now the wonder comes how a unity of this type can be many as well as one. In the case of body it was easy to concede unity-with-plurality; the one body is divisible to infinity; its colour is a different thing from its shape, since in fact they are separated. But if we take SOUL, single, continuous, without extension, of the highest simplicity as the first effort of the mind makes manifest how can we expect to find multiplicity here too? We believed that the division of the living being into body and SOUL was final: body indeed was manifold, composite, diversified; but in SOUL we imagined we had found a simplex, and boldly made a halt, supposing that we had come to the limit of our course. Enneads VI,2,4

Let us examine this SOUL, presented to us from the Intellectual realm as body from the Sensible. How is its unity a plurality? How is its plurality a unity? Clearly its unity is not that of a composite formed from diverse elements, but that of a single nature comprising a plurality. Enneads VI,2,4

5. A first point demanding consideration: Bodies those, for example, of animals and plants are each a multiplicity founded on colour and shape and magnitude, and on the forms and arrangement of parts: yet all these elements spring from a unity. Now this unity must be either Unity-Absolute or some unity less thorough-going and complete, but necessarily more complete than that which emerges, so to speak, from the body itself; this will be a unity having more claim to reality than the unity produced from it, for divergence from unity involves a corresponding divergence from Reality. Since, thus, bodies take their rise from unity, but not “unity” in the sense of the complete unity or Unity-Absolute for this could never yield discrete plurality it remains that they be derived from a unity Pluralized. But the creative principle [in bodies] is SOUL: SOUL therefore is a pluralized unity. Enneads VI,2,5

We then ask whether the plurality here consists of the Reason-Principles of the things of process. Or is this unity not something different from the mere sum of these Principles? Certainly SOUL itself is one Reason-Principle, the chief of the Reason-Principles, and these are its Act as it functions in accordance with its essential being; this essential being, on the other hand, is the potentiality of the Reason-Principles. This is the mode in which this unity is a plurality, its plurality being revealed by the effect it has upon the external. Enneads VI,2,5

But, to leave the region of its effect, suppose we take it at the higher non-effecting part of SOUL; is not plurality of powers to be found in this part also? The existence of this higher part will, we may presume, be at once conceded. Enneads VI,2,5

But is this existence to be taken as identical with that of the stone? Surely not. Being in the case of the stone is not Being pure and simple, but stone-being: so here; SOUL’s being denotes not merely Being but Soul-being. Enneads VI,2,5

Is then that “being” distinct from what else goes to complete the essence [or substance] of SOUL? Is it to be identified with Bring [the Absolute], while to some differentia of Being is ascribed the production of SOUL? No doubt SOUL is in a sense Being, and this is not as a man “is” white, but from the fact of its being purely an essence: in other words, the being it possesses it holds from no source external to its own essence. Enneads VI,2,5

6. But must it not draw on some source external to its essence, if it is to be conditioned, not only by Being, but by being an entity of a particular character? But if it is conditioned by a particular character, and this character is external to its essence, its essence does not comprise all that makes it SOUL; its individuality will determine it; a part of SOUL will be essence, but not SOUL entire. Enneads VI,2,6

Furthermore, what being will it have when we separate it from its other components? The being of a stone? No: the being must be a form of Being appropriate to a source, so to speak, and a first-principle, or rather must take the forms appropriate to all that is comprised in SOUL’s being: the being here must, that is, be life, and the life and the being must be one. Enneads VI,2,6

One, in the sense of being one Reason-Principle? No; it is the substrate of SOUL that is one, though one in such a way as to be also two or more as many as are the Primaries which constitute SOUL. Either, then, it is life as well as Substance, or else it possesses life. Enneads VI,2,6

SOUL, then, is one and many as many as are manifested in that oneness one in its nature, many in those other things. A single Existent, it makes itself many by what we may call its motion: it is one entire, but by its striving, so to speak, to contemplate itself, it is a plurality; for we may imagine that it cannot bear to be a single Existent, when it has the power to be all that it in fact is. The cause of its appearing as many is this contemplation, and its purpose is the Act of the Intellect; if it were manifested as a bare unity, it could have no intellection, since in that simplicity it would already be identical with the object of its thought. Enneads VI,2,6

7. What, then, are the several entities observable in this plurality? We have found Substance [Essence] and life simultaneously present in SOUL. Now, this Substance is a common property of SOUL, but life, common to all souls, differs in that it is a property of Intellect also. Enneads VI,2,7

9. The above considerations to which others, doubtless, might be added suffice to show that these five are primary genera. But that they are the only primary genera, that there are no others, how can we be confident of this? Why do we not add unity to them? Quantity? Quality? Relation, and all else included by our various forerunners? As for unity: If the term is to mean a unity in which nothing else is present, neither SOUL nor Intellect nor anything else, this can be predicated of nothing, and therefore cannot be a genus. If it denotes the unity present in Being, in which case we predicate Being of unity, this unity is not primal. Enneads VI,2,9

11. We are bound however to enquire under what mode unity is contained in Being. How is what is termed the “dividing” effected especially the dividing of the genera Being and unity? Is it the same division, or is it different in the two cases? First then: In what sense, precisely, is any given particular called and known to be a unity? Secondly: Does unity as used of Being carry the same connotation as in reference to the Absolute? Unity is not identical in all things; it has a different significance according as it is applied to the Sensible and the Intellectual realms Being too, of course, comports such a difference and there is a difference in the unity affirmed among sensible things as compared with each other; the unity is not the same in the cases of chorus, camp, ship, house; there is a difference again as between such discrete things and the continuous. Nevertheless, all are representations of the one exemplar, some quite remote, others more effective: the truer likeness is in the Intellectual; SOUL is a unity, and still more is Intellect a unity and Being a unity. Enneads VI,2,11

22. We may here adduce the pregnant words of Plato: “Inasmuch as Intellect perceives the variety and plurality of the Forms present in the complete Living Being....” The words apply equally to SOUL; SOUL is subsequent to Intellect, yet by its very nature it involves Intellect in itself and perceives more clearly in that prior. There is Intellect in our intellect also, which again perceives more clearly in its prior, for while of itself it merely perceives, in the prior it also perceives its own perception. Enneads VI,2,22

Now SOUL has Intellect for its prior, is therefore circumscribed by number down to its ultimate extremity; at that point infinity is reached. The particular intellect, though all-embracing, is a partial thing, and the collective Intellect and its various manifestations [all the particular intellects] are in actuality parts of that part. SOUL too is a part of a part, though in the sense of being an Act [actuality] derived from it. When the Act of Intellect is directed upon itself, the result is the manifold [particular] intellects; when it looks outwards, SOUL is produced. Enneads VI,2,22

If SOUL acts as a genus or a species, the various [particular] souls must act as species. Their activities [Acts] will be twofold: the activity upward is Intellect; that which looks downward constitutes the other powers imposed by the particular Reason-Principle [the Reason-Principle of the being ensouled]; the lowest activity of SOUL is in its contact with Matter to which it brings Form. Enneads VI,2,22

This lower part of SOUL does not prevent the rest from being entirely in the higher sphere: indeed what we call the lower part is but an image of SOUL: not that it is cut off from SOUL; it is like the reflection in the mirror, depending upon the original which stands outside of it. Enneads VI,2,22

The representation, notice, in the portrait or on the water is not of the dual being, but of the one element [Matter] as formed by the other [SOUL]. Similarly, this likeness of the Intellectual realm carries images, not of the creative element, but of the entities contained in that creator, including Man with every other living being: creator and created are alike living beings, though of a different life, and both coexist in the Intellectual realm. Enneads VI,2,22

This procedure however is as we have already shown, impossible in dealing with the subject of our present enquiry. New genera must be sought for this Universe-genera distinct from those of the Intellectual, inasmuch as this realm is different from that, analogous indeed but never identical, a mere image of the higher. True, it involves the parallel existence of Body and SOUL, for the Universe is a living form: essentially however SOUL is of the Intellectual and does not enter into the structure of what is called Sensible Being. Enneads VI,3,1

Remembering this fact, we must however great the difficulty exclude SOUL from the present investigation, just as in a census of citizens, taken in the interests of commerce and taxation, we should ignore the alien population. As for the experiences to which SOUL is indirectly subject in its conjunction with Body and by reason of Body’s presence, their classification must be attempted at a later stage, when we enquire into the details of Sensible Existence. Enneads VI,3,1

But the beauty in the germ, in the particular Reason-Principle is this the same as the manifested beauty, or do they coincide only in name? Are we to assign this beauty and the same question applies to deformity in the SOUL to the Intellectual order, or to the Sensible? That beauty is different in the two spheres is by now clear. If it be embraced in Sensible Quality, then virtue must also be classed among the qualities of the lower. But merely some virtues will take rank as Sensible, others as Intellectual qualities. Enneads VI,3,16

It may even be doubted whether the arts, as Reason-Principles, can fairly be among Sensible qualities; Reason-Principles, it is true, may reside in Matter, but “matter” for them means SOUL. On the other hand, their being found in company with Matter commits them in some degree to the lower sphere. Take the case of lyrical music: it is performed upon strings; melody, which may be termed a part of the art, is sensuous sound though, perhaps, we should speak here not of parts but of manifestations [Acts]: yet, called manifestations, they are nonetheless sensuous. The beauty inherent in body is similarly bodiless; but we have assigned it to the order of things bound up with body and subordinate to it. Enneads VI,3,16

Geometry and arithmetic are, we shall maintain, of a twofold character; in their earthly types they rank with Sensible Quality, but in so far as they are functions of pure SOUL, they necessarily belong to that other world in close proximity to the Intellectual. This, too, is in Plato’s view the case with music and astronomy. Enneads VI,3,16

The arts concerned with material objects and making use of perceptible instruments and sense-perception must be classed with Sensible Quality, even though they are dispositions of the SOUL, attendant upon its apostasy. Enneads VI,3,16

There is also every reason for consigning to this category the practical virtues whose function is directed to a social end: these do not isolate SOUL by inclining it towards the higher; their manifestation makes for beauty in this world, a beauty regarded not as necessary but as desirable. Enneads VI,3,16

Are we, then, to rank the individual SOUL, as containing these Reason-Principles, with Sensible Substance? But we do not even identify the Principles with body; we merely include them in Sensible Quality on the ground that they are connected with body and are activities of body. The constituents of Sensible Substance have already been specified; we have no intention whatever of adding to them Substance bodiless. Enneads VI,3,16

As for Qualities, we hold that they are invariably bodiless, being affections arising within SOUL; but, like the Reason-Principles of the individual SOUL, they are associated with SOUL in its apostasy, and are accordingly counted among the things of the lower realm: such affections, torn between two worlds by their objects and their abode, we have assigned to Quality, which is indeed not bodily but manifested in body. Enneads VI,3,16

But we refrain from assigning SOUL to Sensible Substance, on the ground that we have already referred to Quality [which is Sensible] those affections of SOUL which are related to body. On the contrary, SOUL, conceived apart from affection and Reason-Principle, we have restored to its origin, leaving in the lower realm no substance which is in any sense Intellectual. Enneads VI,3,16

In the one type of Motion a new Form comes into existence created by the motion; the other constitutes, as it were, the pure Form of the potentiality, and leaves nothing behind it when once the motion has ceased. Accordingly, the view would not be unreasonable which, taking some Forms to be active, others inactive, regarded Motion as a dynamic Form in opposition to the other Forms which are static, and further as the cause of whatever new Form ensues upon it. To proceed to identify this bodily motion with life would however be unwarrantable; it must be considered as identical only in name with the motions of Intellect and SOUL. Enneads VI,3,22

1. How are we to explain the omnipresence of the SOUL? Does it depend upon the definite magnitude of the material universe coupled with some native tendency in SOUL to distribute itself over material mass, or is it a characteristic of SOUL apart from body? In the latter case, SOUL will not appear just where body may bring it; body will meet SOUL awaiting it everywhere; wheresoever body finds place, there SOUL lay before ever body was; the entire material mass of the universe has been set into an existent SOUL. Enneads VI,4,1

But if SOUL spread thus wide before material extension existed, then as covering all space it would seem to be of itself a thing of magnitude, and in what mode could it exist in the All before the All was in being, before there was any All? And who can accept a SOUL described as partless and massless and yet, for all that absence of extension, extending over a universe? We may perhaps be told that, though extended over the corporeal, it does not itself become so: but thus to give it magnitude as an accidental attribute leaves the problem still unsolved: precisely the same question must in all reason arise: How can the SOUL take magnitude even in the move of accident? We cannot think of SOUL being diffused as a quality is, say sweetness or colour, for while these are actual states of the masses affected so that they show that quality at every point, none of them has an independent existence; they are attributes of body and known only as in body; such quality is necessarily of a definite extension. Further, the colour at any point is independent of that at any other; no doubt the Form, White, is the same all over, but there is not arithmetical identity; in SOUL there is; it is one SOUL in foot and in hand, as the facts of perception show. And yet in the case of qualities the one is observably distributed part for part; in the SOUL the identity is undistributed; what we sometimes call distribution is simply omnipresence. Enneads VI,4,1

Obviously, we must take hold of the question from the very beginning in the hope of finding some clear and convincing theory as to how SOUL, immaterial and without magnitude, can be thus broad-spread, whether before material masses exist or as enveloping them. Of course, should it appear that this omnipresence may occur apart from material things, there is no difficulty in accepting its occurrence within the material. Enneads VI,4,1

Now, in beings whose unity does not reproduce the entire nature of that principle, any presence is presence of an emanant power: even this, however, does not mean that the principle is less than integrally present; it is not sundered from the power which it has uttered; all is offered, but the recipient is able to take only so much. But in Beings in which the plenitude of these powers is manifested, there clearly the Authentic itself is present, though still as remaining distinct; it is distinct in that, becoming the informing principle of some definite thing, it would abdicate from its standing as the total and from its uttermost self-abiding and would belong, in some mode of accident, to another thing as well. Still it is not the property of what may seek to join with it; it chooses where it will and enters as the participant’s power may allow, but it does not become a chattel; it remains the quested and so in another sense never passes over. There is nothing disquieting in omnipresence after this mode where there is no appropriation: in the same accidental way, we may reasonably put it, SOUL concurs with body, but it is SOUL self-holding, not inbound with Matter, free even of the body which it has illuminated through and through. Enneads VI,4,3

4. But how explain beings by the side of Being, and the variety of intelligences and of souls, when Being has the unity of omnipresent identity and not merely that of a species, and when intellect and SOUL are likewise numerically one? We certainly distinguish between the SOUL of the All and the particular souls. Enneads VI,4,4

But if the Authentic Being is to be kept unattached in order to remove the difficulty of integral omnipresence, the same considerations must apply equally to the souls; we would have to admit that they cannot be integrally omnipresent in the bodies they are described as occupying; either, SOUL must be distributed, part to body’s part, or it is lodged entire at some one point in the body giving forth some of its powers to the other points; and these very powers, again, present the same difficulty. Enneads VI,4,4

A further objection is that some one spot in the body will hold the SOUL, the others no more than a power from it. Enneads VI,4,4

SOUL too? Souls too. That principle distributed over material masses we hold to be in its own nature incapable of distribution; the magnitude belongs to the masses; when this soul-principle enters into them or rather they into it it is thought of as distributable only because, within the discrimination of the corporeal, the animating force is to be recognised at any and every point. For SOUL is not articulated, section of SOUL to section of body; there is integral omnipresence manifesting the unity of that principle, its veritable partlessness. Enneads VI,4,4

Now as in SOUL unity does not debar variety, so with Being and the Beings; in that order multiplicity does not conflict with unity. Multiplicity. This is not due to the need of flooding the universe with life; nor is the extension of the corporeal the cause of the multiplicity of souls; before body existed, SOUL was one and many; the many souls fore-existed in the All not potentially but each effectively; that one collective SOUL is no bar to the variety; the variety does not abrogate the unity; the souls are apart without partition, present each to all as never having been set in opposition; they are no more hedged off by boundaries than are the multiple items of knowledge in one mind; the one SOUL so exists as to include all souls; the nature of such a principle must be utterly free of boundary. Enneads VI,4,4

We may not make this principle the lesser, or if in the sense of mass we do, we must not begin to mistrust the power of that less to stretch to the greater. Of course, we have in fact no right to affirm it less or to measure the thing of magnitude against that which has none; as well talk of a doctor’s skill being smaller than his body. This greatness is not to be thought of in terms of quantity; the greater and less of body have nothing to do with SOUL. Enneads VI,4,5

The nature of the greatness of SOUL is indicated by the fact that as the body grows, the larger mass is held by the same SOUL that sufficed to the smaller; it would be in many ways absurd to suppose a corresponding enlargement in the SOUL. Enneads VI,4,5

6. But why does not one same SOUL enter more than one body? Because any second body must approach, if it might; but the first has approached and received and keeps. Enneads VI,4,6

Are we to think that this second body, in keeping its SOUL with a like care, is keeping the same SOUL as the first? Why not: what difference is there? Merely some additions [from the experiences of life, none in the SOUL itself]. Enneads VI,4,6

We ask further why one SOUL in foot and hand and not one SOUL in the distinct members of the universe. Enneads VI,4,6

Sensations no doubt differ from SOUL to SOUL but only as do the conditions and experiences; this is difference not in the judging principle but in the matters coming to judgement; the judge is one and the same SOUL pronouncing upon various events, and these not its own but belonging to a particular body; it is only as a man pronounces simultaneously upon a pleasant sensation in his finger and a pain in his head. Enneads VI,4,6

But why is not the SOUL in one man aware, then, of the judgement passed by another? Because it is a judgement made, not a state set up; besides, the SOUL that has passed the judgement does not pronounce but simply judges: similarly a man’s sight does not report to his hearing, though both have passed judgement; it is the reason above both that reports, and this is a principle distinct from either. Often, as it happens, reason does become aware of a verdict formed in another reason and takes to itself an alien experience: but this has been dealt with elsewhere. Enneads VI,4,6

11. Still, this integral omnipresence admitted, why do not all things participate in the Intellectual Order in its entirety? Why has it a first participant, a second, and so on? We can but see that presence is determined by the fitness of the participant so that, while Being is omnipresent to the realm of Being, never falling short of itself, yet only the competent possess themselves of that presence which depends not upon situation but upon adequacy; the transparent object and the opaque answer very differently to the light. These firsts, seconds, thirds, of participance are determined by rank, by power, not by place but by differentiation; and difference is no bar to coexistence, witness SOUL and Intellectual-Principle: similarly our own knowledge, the trivial next the gravest; one and the same object yields colour to our sight, fragrance to smell, to every sense a particular experience, all presented simultaneously. Enneads VI,4,11

But would not this indicate that the Authentic is diverse, multiple? That diversity is simplex still; that multiple is one; for it is a Reason-Principle, which is to say a unity in variety: all Being is one; the differing being is still included in Being; the differentiation is within Being, obviously not within non-Being. Being is bound up with the unity which is never apart from it; wheresoever Being appears, there appears its unity; and the unity of Being is self-standing, for presence in the sensible does not abrogate independence: things of sense are present to the Intellectual where this occurs otherwise than as the Intellectual is present within itself; so, too, body’s presence to SOUL differs from that of knowledge to SOUL; one item of knowledge is present in a different way than another; a body’s presence to body is, again, another form of relation. Enneads VI,4,11

12. Think of a sound passing through the air and carrying a word; an ear within range catches and comprehends; and the sound and word will strike upon any other ear you may imagine within the intervening void, upon any that attends; from a great distance many eyes look to the one object and all take it fully; all this, because eye and ear exist. In the same way, what is apt for SOUL will possess itself of SOUL, while from the one identical presence another will derive something else. Enneads VI,4,12

The sound is the clearer illustration: the form conveyed is an entirety over all the air space, for unless the spoken word were entire at every point, for every ear to catch the whole alike, the same effect could not be made upon every listener; the sound, evidently, is not strung along the air, section to section. Why, then, need we hesitate to think of SOUL as a thing not extended in broken contact, part for part, but omnipresent within the range of its presence, indwelling in totality at every point throughout the All? Entered into such bodies as are apt to it, the SOUL is like the spoken sound present in the air, before that entry, like the speaker about to speak though even embodied it remains at once the speaker and the silent. Enneads VI,4,12

No doubt these illustrations are imperfect, but they carry a serviceable similitude: the SOUL belongs to that other Kind, and we must not conceive a part of it embodied and a part intact; it is at once a self-enclosed unity and a principle manifested in diversity. Enneads VI,4,12

Further, any newcoming entity achieving SOUL receives mysteriously that same principle which was equally in the previously ensouled; for it is not in the dispensation that a given part of SOUL situate at some given point should enter here and there; what is thought of as entering was always a self-enclosed entire and, for all the seeming entry, so remains; no real entry is conceivable. If, then, the SOUL never entered and yet is now seen to be present present without waiting upon the participant clearly it is present, here too, without breach of its self-inclusion. This can mean only that the participant came to SOUL; it lay outside the veritable reality but advanced towards it and so established itself in the kosmos of life. But this kosmos of life is a self-gathered entire, not divisible into constituent masses but prior to mass; in other words, the participation is of entire in entire. Any newcomer into that kosmos of life will participate in it entire. Admitting, then, that this kosmos of life is present entire in the universe, it must be similarly entire in each several entity; an identity numerically one, it must be an undivided entire, omnipresent. Enneads VI,4,12

If, then, the participant mass in its entirety is to contain that principle entire, the universe must hold that one SOUL present at its every point. Enneads VI,4,13

14. But, admitting this one SOUL at every point, how is there a particular SOUL of the individual and how the good SOUL and the bad? The one SOUL reaches to the individual but nonetheless contains all souls and all intelligences; this, because it is at once a unity and an infinity; it holds all its content as one yet with each item distinct, though not to the point of separation. Except by thus holding all its content as one-life entire, SOUL entire, all intelligence it could not be infinite; since the individualities are not fenced off from each other, it remains still one thing. It was to hold life not single but infinite and yet one life, one in the sense not of an aggregate built up but of the retention of the unity in which all rose. Strictly, of course, it is a matter not of the rising of the individuals but of their being eternally what they are; in that order, as there is no beginning, so there is no apportioning except as an interpretation by the recipient. What is of that realm is the ancient and primal; the relation to it of the thing of process must be that of approach and apparent merging with always dependence. Enneads VI,4,14

15. But how did this intruder find entrance? It had a certain aptitude and it grasped at that to which it was apt. In its nature it was capable of SOUL: but what is unfitted to receive SOUL entire present entire but not for it takes what share it may; such are the members of the animal and vegetal order. Similarly, of a significant sound, some forms of being take sound and significance together, others only the sound, the blank impact. Enneads VI,4,15

A living thing comes into existence containing SOUL, present to it from the Authentic, and by SOUL is inbound with Reality entire; it possesses also a body; but this body is not a husk having no part in SOUL, not a thing that earlier lay away in the soulless; the body had its aptitude and by this draws near: now it is not body merely, but living body. By this neighboring it is enhanced with some impress of SOUL not in the sense of a portion of SOUL entering into it, but that it is warmed and lit by SOUL entire: at once there is the ground of desire, pleasure, pain; the body of the living form that has come to be was certainly no unrelated thing. Enneads VI,4,15

The SOUL, sprung from the divine, lay self-enclosed at peace, true to its own quality; but its neighbour, in uproar through weakness, instable of its own nature and beaten upon from without, cries, at first to itself and afterwards upon the living total, spreading the disorder at large. Thus, at an assembly the Elders may sit in tranquil meditation, but an unruly populace, crying for food and casting up a host of grievances, will bring the whole gathering into ugly turmoil; when this sort of people hold their peace so that a word from a man of sense may reach them, some passable order is restored and the baser part ceases to prevail; otherwise the silence of the better allows the rabble to rule, the distracted assembly unable to take the word from above. Enneads VI,4,15

16. But if that Principle can never fall to evil and we have given a true account of the SOUL’s entry or presence to body, what are we to say of the periodic Descents and Returns, the punishments, the banishment into animal forms? That teaching we have inherited from those ancient philosophers who have best probed into SOUL and we must try to show that our own doctrine is accordant with it, or at least not conflicting. Enneads VI,4,16

We have seen that the participation of things here in that higher means not that the SOUL has gone outside of itself to enter the corporeal, but that the corporeal has approached SOUL and is now participant in it; the coming affirmed by the ancients can be only that approach of the body to the higher by which it partakes of life and of SOUL; this has nothing to do with local entry but is some form of communion; by the descent and embodiment of current phrasing must be understood not that SOUL becomes an appanage of body but that it gives out to it something of itself; similarly, the SOUL’s departure is the complete cessation of that communion. Enneads VI,4,16

The various rankings of the universe will determine various degrees of the communion; SOUL, ultimate of the Intellectual, will give forth freely to body as being more nearly of the one power and standing closer, as distance holds in that order. Enneads VI,4,16

The SOUL’s evil will be this association, its good the release. Why? Because, even unmerged, a SOUL in any way to be described as attached to this universe is in some degree fallen from the All into a state of partition; essentially belonging to the All, it no longer directs its act Thither: thus, a man’s knowledge is one whole, but he may guide himself by no more than some single item of it, where his good would lie in living not by some such fragment but by the total of his knowing. Enneads VI,4,16

That One SOUL member of the Intellectual kosmos and there merging what it has of partial into the total has broken away, so to speak, from the All to the part and to that devotes itself becoming partial with it: thus fire that might consume everything may be set to ply its all-power upon some trifle. So long as the SOUL remains utterly unattached it is SOUL not singled out; when it has accepted separation not that of place but that of act determining individualities it is a part, no longer the SOUL entire, or at least not entire in the first sense; when, on the contrary, it exercises no such outward control it is perfectly the All-Soul, the partial in it latent. Enneads VI,4,16

As for the entry into the World of the Shades, if this means into the unseen, that is its release; if into some lower place, there is nothing strange in that, since even here the SOUL is taken to be where the body is, in place with the body. Enneads VI,4,16

But on the dissolution of the body? So long as the image-soul has not been discarded, clearly the higher will be where that is; if, on the contrary, the higher has been completely emancipated by philosophic discipline, the image-soul may very well go alone to that lower place, the authentic passing uncontaminated into the Intellectual, separated from that image but nonetheless the SOUL entire. Enneads VI,4,16

Let the image-offspring of the individuality fare as it may, the true SOUL when it turns its light upon itself, chooses the higher and by that choice blends into the All, neither acting now nor extinct. Enneads VI,4,16

This does not mean that Man Absolute, or any Absolute, or the Universe in the sense of a Whole, is absorbed by multiplicity; on the contrary, the multiplicity is absorbed by the Absolute, or rather is bound up with it. There is a difference between the mode in which a colour may be absorbed by a substance entire and that in which the SOUL of the individual is identically present in every part of the body: it is in this latter mode that Being is omnipresent. Enneads VI,5,6

It is in this understanding that the SOUL has been taken to be a numerical principle, while others think of it as in its nature a self-increasing number; this latter notion is probably designed to meet the consideration that the SOUL at no point fails but, retaining its distinctive character, is ample for all, so much so that were the kosmos vaster yet the virtue of SOUL would still compass it or rather the kosmos still be sunk in SOUL entire. Enneads VI,5,9

Of course, we must understand this adding of extension not as a literal increase but in the sense that the SOUL, essentially a unity, becomes adequate to omnipresence; its unity sets it outside of quantitative measurement, the characteristic of that other order which has but a counterfeit unity, an appearance by participation. Enneads VI,5,9

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,5,12

7. It is inevitably necessary to think of all as contained within one nature; one nature must hold and encompass all; there cannot be as in the realm of sense thing apart from thing, here a sun and elsewhere something else; all must be mutually present within a unity. This is the very nature of the Intellectual-Principle as we may know from SOUL which reproduces it and from what we call Nature under which and by which the things of process are brought into their disjointed being while that Nature itself remains indissolubly one. Enneads VI,6,7

Against doubters we cite the fact of participation; the greatness and beauty of the Intellectual-Principle we know by the SOUL’s longing towards it; the longing of the rest towards SOUL is set up by its likeness to its higher and to the possibility open to them of attaining resemblance through it. Enneads VI,6,7

But knowledge must not this imply presence to the alien? No; knowledge, known and knower are an identity; so with all the rest; every member of Intellectual-Principle is therefore present to it primally; justice, for example, is not accidental to it as to SOUL in its character as SOUL, where these virtues are mainly potential becoming actual by the intention towards Intellectual-Principle and association with it. Enneads VI,6,15

But what of that “Number within us having its own manner of being”? It is the Number of our essence. “Our essence” we read “partakes of Number and harmony and, also, is Number and harmony.” “Neither body nor magnitude,” someone says: SOUL, then, is Number since it is essence. The number belonging to body is an essence of the order of body; the number belonging to SOUL constitutes the essences of souls. Enneads VI,6,16

How then can we deny to it either Being or anything at all that may exist effectively, anything that may derive from it? As long as it exists it produces: but it exists for ever; so, therefore, do its products. And so great is it in power and beauty that it remains the allurer, all things of the universe depending from it and rejoicing to hold their trace of it and through that to seek their good. To us, existence is before the good; all this world desires life and wisdom in order to Being; every SOUL and every intellect seeks to be its Being, but Being is sufficient to itself. Enneads VI,6,18

But how could that Principle have such perception, be aware of things of sense? Surely it is untenable on the one hand that sense-perception should exist There, from eternity, and on the other that only upon the debasement of the SOUL should there be sense-perception here and the accomplishment in this realm of the Act of what was always a power in that? Enneads VI,7,3

We ask first whether man as here is a Reason-Principle different to that SOUL which produces him as here and gives him life and thought; or is he that very SOUL or, again, the [yet lower] SOUL using the human body? Now if man is a reasonable living being and by “living being” is meant a conjoint of SOUL and body, the Reason-Principle of man is not identical with SOUL. But if the conjoint of SOUL and body is the reason-principle of man, how can man be an eternal reality, seeing that it is only when SOUL and body have come together that the Reason-Principle so constituted appears? The Reason-Principle will be the foreteller of the man to be, not the Man Absolute with which we are dealing but more like his definition, and not at that indicating his nature since what is indicated is not the Idea that is to enter Matter but only that of the known thing, the conjoint. We have not yet found the Man we are seeking, the equivalent of the Reason-Principle. Enneads VI,7,4

What, then, is this essential of Man? What is the indwelling, inseparable something which constitutes Man as here? Is the Reason-Principle itself a reasoning living being or merely a maker of that reasoning life-form? and what is it apart from that act of making? The living being corresponds to a reasoning life in the Reason-Principle; man therefore is a reasoning life: but there is no life without SOUL; either, then, the SOUL supplies the reasoning life and man therefore is not an essence but simply an activity of the SOUL or the SOUL is the man. Enneads VI,7,4

But if reasoning SOUL is the man, why does it not constitute man upon its entry into some other animal form? Enneads VI,7,4

5. Man, thus, must be some Reason-Principle other than SOUL. But why should he not be some conjoint a SOUL in a certain Reason-Principle the Reason-Principle being, as it were, a definite activity which however could not exist without that which acts? This is the case with the Reason-Principles in seed which are neither soulless nor entirely SOUL. For these productive principles cannot be devoid of SOUL and there is nothing surprising in such essences being Reason-Principles. Enneads VI,7,5

But these principles producing other forms than man, of what phase of SOUL are they activities? Of the vegetal SOUL? Rather of that which produces animal life, a brighter SOUL and therefore one more intensely living. Enneads VI,7,5

The SOUL of that order, the SOUL that has entered into Matter of that order, is man by having, apart from body, a certain disposition; within body it shapes all to its own fashion, producing another form of Man, man reduced to what body admits, just as an artist may make a reduced image of that again. Enneads VI,7,5

It is SOUL, then, that holds the pattern and Reason-Principles of Man, the natural tendencies, the dispositions and powers all feeble since this is not the Primal Man and it contains also the Ideal-Forms of other senses, Forms which themselves are senses, bright to all seeming but images, and dim in comparison with those of the earlier order. Enneads VI,7,5

The higher Man, above this sphere, rises from the more godlike SOUL, a SOUL possessed of a nobler humanity and brighter perceptions. This must be the Man of Plato’s definition [”Man is SOUL”], where the addition “SOUL as using body” marks the distinction between the SOUL which uses body directly and the SOUL, poised above, which touches body only through that intermediary. Enneads VI,7,5

The Man of the realm of birth has sense-perception: the higher SOUL enters to bestow a brighter life, or rather does not so much enter as simply impart itself; for SOUL does not leave the Intellectual but, maintaining that contact, holds the lower life as pendant from it, blending with it by the natural link of Reason-Principle to Reason-Principle: and man, the dimmer, brightens under that illumination. Enneads VI,7,5

6. But how can that higher SOUL have sense-perception? It is the perception of what falls under perception There, sensation in the mode of that realm: it is the source of the SOUL’s perception of the sense-realm in its correspondence with the Intellectual. Man as sense-percipient becomes aware of that correspondence and accommodates the sense-realm to the lowest extremity of its counterpart There, proceeding from the fire Intellectual to the fire here which becomes perceptible by its analogy with that of the higher sphere. If material things existed There, the SOUL would perceive them; Man in the Intellectual, Man as Intellectual SOUL, would be aware of the terrestrial. This is how the secondary Man, copy of Man in the Intellectual, contains the Reason-Principles in copy; and Man in the Intellectual-Principle contained the Man that existed before any man. The diviner shines out upon the secondary and the secondary upon the tertiary; and even the latest possesses them all not in the sense of actually living by them all but as standing in under-parallel to them. Some of us act by this lowest; in another rank there is a double activity, a trace of the higher being included; in yet another there is a blending of the third grade with the others: each is that Man by which he acts while each too contains all the grades, though in some sense not so. On the separation of the third life and third Man from the body, then if the second also departs of course not losing hold on the Above the two, as we are told, will occupy the same place. No doubt it seems strange that a SOUL which has been the Reason-Principle of a man should come to occupy the body of an animal: but the SOUL has always been all, and will at different times be this and that. Enneads VI,7,6

Pure, not yet fallen to evil, the SOUL chooses man and is man, for this is the higher, and it produces the higher. It produces also the still loftier beings, the Celestials [Daimons], who are of one Form with the SOUL that makes Man: higher still stands that Man more entirely of the Celestial rank, almost a god, reproducing God, a Celestial closely bound to God as a man is to Man. For that Being into which man develops is not to be called a god; there remains the difference which distinguishes souls, all of the same race though they be. This is taking “Celestial” [”Daimon”] in the sense of Plato. Enneads VI,7,6

When a SOUL which in the human state has been thus attached chooses animal nature and descends to that, it is giving forth the Reason-Principle necessarily in it of that particular animal: this lower it contained and the activity has been to the lower. Enneads VI,7,6

7. But if it is by becoming evil and inferior that the SOUL produces the animal nature, the making of ox or horse was not at the outset in its character; the reason-principle of the animal, and the animal itself, must lie outside of the natural plan? Inferior, yes; but outside of nature, no. The thing There [SOUL in the Intellectual] was in some sense horse and dog from the beginning; given the condition, it produces the higher kind; let the condition fail, then, since produce it must, it produces what it may: it is like a skillful craftsman competent to create all kinds of works of art but reduced to making what is ordered and what the aptitude of his material indicates. Enneads VI,7,7

The power of the All-Soul, as Reason-Principle of the universe, may be considered as laying down a pattern before the effective separate powers go forth from it: this plan would be something like a tentative illumining of Matter; the elaborating SOUL would give minute articulation to these representations of itself; every separate effective SOUL would become that towards which it tended, assuming that particular form as the choral dancer adapts himself to the action set down for him. Enneads VI,7,7

But why should it not be simply a dyad? Because neither of the constituents could ever be a pure unity, but at the very least a duality and so progressively [in an endless dualization]. Besides, in that first duality of the hypothesis there would be also movement and rest, Intellect and the life included in Intellect, all-embracing Intellect and life complete. That means that it could not be one Intellect; it must be Intellect agglomerate including all the particular intellects, a thing therefore as multiple as all the Intellects and more so; and the life in it would nat be that of one SOUL but of all the souls with the further power of producing the single souls: it would be the entire living universe containing much besides man; for if it contained only man, man would be alone here. Enneads VI,7,8

But, having fire [warmth] and water, it will certainly have vegetation; how does vegetation exist There? Earth, too? either these are alive or they are There as dead things and then not everything There has life. How in sum can the things of this realm be also There? Vegetal life we can well admit, for the plant is a Reason-Principle established in life. If in the plant the Reason-Principle, entering Matter and constituting the plant, is a certain form of life, a definite SOUL, then, since every Reason-Principle is a unity, then either this of plant-life is the primal or before it there is a primal plant, source of its being: that first plant would be a unity; those here, being multiple, must derive from a unity. This being so, that primal must have much the truer life and be the veritable plant, the plants here deriving from it in the secondary and tertiary degree and living by a vestige of its life. Enneads VI,7,11

Fire, similarly, with other such things, must be a Reason-Principle established in Matter: fire certainly does not originate in the friction to which it may be traced; the friction merely brings out a fire already existent in the scheme and contained in the materials rubbed together. Matter does not in its own character possess this fire-power: the true cause is something informing the Matter, that is to say, a Reason-Principle, obviously therefore a SOUL having the power of bringing fire into being; that is, a life and a Reason-Principle in one. Enneads VI,7,11

It is with this in mind that Plato says there is SOUL in everything of this sphere. That SOUL is the cause of the fire of the sense-world; the cause of fire here is a certain Life of fiery character, the more authentic fire. That transcendent fire being more truly fire will be more veritably alive; the fire absolute possesses life. And the same principles apply to the other elements, water and air. Enneads VI,7,11

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,7,11

13. For Intellectual-Principle is not a simplex, nor is the SOUL that proceeds from it: on the contrary things include variety in the degree of their simplicity, that is to say in so far as they are not compounds but Principles and Activities; the activity of the lowest is simple in the sense of being a fading-out, that of the First as the total of all activity. Intellectual-Principle is moved in a movement unfailingly true to one course, but its unity and identity are not those of the partial; they are those of its universality; and indeed the partial itself is not a unity but divides to infinity. Enneads VI,7,13

Thus the Life in the Supreme was the collectivity of power; the vision taking place There was the potentiality of all; Intellectual-Principle, thus arising, is manifested as this universe of Being. It stands over the Beings not as itself requiring base but that it may serve as base to the Form of the Firsts, the Formless Form. And it takes position towards the SOUL, becoming a light to the SOUL as itself finds its light in the First; whenever Intellectual-Principle becomes the determinant of SOUL it shapes it into Reasoning SOUL, by communicating a trace of what itself has come to possess. Enneads VI,7,17

19. Are we to rest all on pursuit and on the SOUL? Is it enough to put faith in the SOUL’s choice and call that good which the SOUL pursues, never asking ourselves the motive of its choice? We marshal demonstration as to the nature of everything else; is the good to be dismissed as choice? Several absurdities would be entailed. The good becomes a mere attribute of things; objects of pursuit are many and different so that mere choice gives no assurance that the thing chosen is the best; in fact, we cannot know the best until we know the good. Enneads VI,7,19

Thus virtue and Intellectual-Principle and life and SOUL reasoning SOUL, at least belong to the idea of good and so therefore does all that a reasoned life aims at. Enneads VI,7,20

Why not halt, then it will be asked at Intellectual-Principle and make that The Good? SOUL and life are traces of Intellectual-Principle; that principle is the Term of SOUL which on judgement sets itself towards Intellectual-Principle, pronouncing right preferable to wrong and virtue in every form to vice, and thus ranking by its choosing. Enneads VI,7,20

The SOUL aiming only at that Principle would need a further lessoning; it must be taught that Intellectual-Principle is not the ultimate, that not all things look to that while all do look to the good. Not all that is outside of Intellectual-Principle seeks to attain it; what has attained it does not halt there but looks still towards good. Besides, Intellectual-Principle is sought upon motives of reasoning, the good before all reason. And in any striving towards life and continuity of existence and activity, the object is aimed at not as Intellectual-Principle but as good, as rising from good and leading to it: life itself is desirable only in view of good. Enneads VI,7,20

22. That light known, then indeed we are stirred towards those Beings in longing and rejoicing over the radiance about them, just as earthly love is not for the material form but for the Beauty manifested upon it. Every one of those Beings exists for itself but becomes an object of desire by the colour cast upon it from The Good, source of those graces and of the love they evoke. The SOUL taking that outflow from the divine is stirred; seized with a Bacchic passion, goaded by these goads, it becomes Love. Before that, even Intellectual-Principle with all its loveliness did not stir the SOUL; for that beauty is dead until it take the light of The Good, and the SOUL lies supine, cold to all, unquickened even to Intellectual-Principle there before it. But when there enters into it a glow from the divine, it gathers strength, awakens, spreads true wings, and however urged by its nearer environing, speeds its buoyant way elsewhere, to something greater to its memory: so long as there exists anything loftier than the near, its very nature bears it upwards, lifted by the giver of that love. Beyond Intellectual-Principle it passes but beyond The Good it cannot, for nothing stands above That. Let it remain in Intellectual-Principle and it sees the lovely and august, but it is not there possessed of all it sought; the face it sees is beautiful no doubt but not of power to hold its gaze because lacking in the radiant grace which is the bloom upon beauty. Enneads VI,7,22

Why else is there more of the glory of beauty upon the living and only some faint trace of it upon the dead, though the face yet retains all its fulness and symmetry? Why are the most living portraits the most beautiful, even though the others happen to be more symmetric? Why is the living ugly more attractive than the sculptured handsome? It is that the one is more nearly what we are looking for, and this because there is SOUL there, because there is more of the Idea of The Good, because there is some glow of the light of The Good and this illumination awakens and lifts the SOUL and all that goes with it so that the whole man is won over to goodness, and in the fullest measure stirred to life. Enneads VI,7,22

23. That which SOUL must quest, that which sheds its light upon Intellectual-Principle, leaving its mark wherever it falls, surely we need not wonder that it be of power to draw to itself, calling back from every wandering to rest before it. From it came all, and so there is nothing mightier; all is feeble before it. Of all things the best, must it not be The Good? If by The Good we mean the principle most wholly self-sufficing, utterly without need of any other, what can it be but this? Before all the rest, it was what it was, when evil had yet no place in things. Enneads VI,7,23

24. But ourselves how does it touch us? We may recall what we have said of the nature of the light shining from it into Intellectual-Principle and so by participation into the SOUL. But for the moment let us leave that aside and put another question: Does The Good hold that nature and name because some outside thing finds it desirable? May we put it that a thing desirable to one is good to that one and that what is desirable to all is to be recognised as The Good? No doubt this universal questing would make the goodness evident but still there must be in the nature something to earn that name. Enneads VI,7,24

Matter would have Forming-Idea for its good, since, were it conscious, it would welcome that; body would look to SOUL, without which it could not be or endure; SOUL must look to virtue; still higher stands Intellectual-Principle; above that again is the principle we call the Primal. Each of these progressive priors must have act upon those minors to which they are, respectively, the good: some will confer order and place, others life, others wisdom and the good life: Intellectual-Principle will draw upon the Authentic Good which we hold to be coterminous with it, both as being an Activity put forth from it and as even now taking light from it. This good we will define later. Enneads VI,7,25

27. But what is that whose entry supplies every such need? Some Idea, we maintain. There is a Form to which Matter aspires: to SOUL, moral excellence is this Form. Enneads VI,7,27

But if Matter by very essence is evil how could it choose the good? This question implies that if Evil were self-conscious it would admire itself: but how can the unadmirable be admired; and did we not discover that the good must be apt to the nature? There that question may rest. But if universally the good is Form and the higher the ascent the more there is of Form-Soul more truly Form than body is and phases of SOUL progressively of higher Form and Intellectual-Principle standing as Form to SOUL collectively then the Good advances by the opposite of Matter and, therefore, by a cleansing and casting away to the utmost possible at each stage: and the greatest good must be there where all that is of Matter has disappeared. The Principle of Good rejecting Matter entirely or rather never having come near it at any point or in any way must hold itself aloft with that Formless in which Primal Form takes its origin. But we will return to this. Enneads VI,7,28

Now to found the good upon the Intellect and upon that state of SOUL or mind which springs from wisdom does not imply that the end or the absolute good is the conjunction [of Intellect and state]: it would follow merely that Intellect is the good and that we feel happy in possession of that good. That is one theory; another associates pleasure with Intellect in the sense that the Good is taken to be some one thing founded upon both but depending upon our attaining or at least contemplating an Intellect so modified; this theory would maintain that the isolated and unrelated could be the good, could be an object of desire. Enneads VI,7,30

But how could Intellect and pleasure combine into one mutually complementary nature? Bodily pleasure no one, certainly, would think capable of blending in with Intellect; the unreasoning satisfactions of SOUL [or lower mind] are equally incompatible with it. Enneads VI,7,30

31. But since Thence come the beauty and light in all, it is Thence that Intellectual-Principle took the brilliance of the Intellectual Energy which flashed Nature into being; Thence SOUL took power towards life, in virtue of that fuller life streaming into it. Intellectual-Principle was raised thus to that Supreme and remains with it, happy in that presence. SOUL too, that SOUL which as possessing knowledge and vision was capable, clung to what it saw; and as its vision so its rapture; it saw and was stricken; but having in itself something of that principle it felt its kinship and was moved to longing like those stirred by the image of the beloved to desire of the veritable presence. Lovers   here mould themselves to the beloved; they seek to increase their attraction of person and their likeness of mind; they are unwilling to fall short in moral quality or in other graces lest they be distasteful to those possessing such merit and only among such can true love be. In the same way the SOUL loves the Supreme Good, from its very beginnings stirred by it to love. The SOUL which has never strayed from this love waits for no reminding from the beauty of our world: holding that love perhaps unawares it is ever in quest, and, in its longing to be borne Thither, passes over what is lovely here and with one glance at the beauty of the universe dismisses all; for it sees that all is put together of flesh and Matter, befouled by its housing, made fragmentary by corporal extension, not the Authentic Beauty which could never venture into the mud of body to be soiled, annulled. Enneads VI,7,31

The Intellectual-Principle is the less for seeing things as distinct even in its act of grasping in unity the multiple content of its Intellectual realm; in its knowing of the particular it possesses itself of one Intellectual shape; but, even thus, in this dealing with variety as unity, it leaves us still with the question how we are to envisage that which stands beyond this all-lovely, beyond this principle at once multiple and above multiplicity, the Supreme for which the SOUL hungers though unable to tell why such a being should stir its longing-reason, however, urging that This at last is the Authentic Term because the Nature best and most to be loved may be found there only where there is no least touch of Form. Bring something under Form and present it so before the mind; immediately we ask what Beyond imposed that shape; reason answers that while there exists the giver having shape to give a giver that is shape, idea, an entirely measured thing yet this is not alone, is not adequate in itself, is not beautiful in its own right but is a mingled thing. Shape and idea and measure will always be beautiful, but the Authentic Beauty and the Beyond-Beauty cannot be under measure and therefore cannot have admitted shape or be Idea: the primal existent, The First, must be without Form; the beauty in it must be, simply, the Nature of the Intellectual Good. Enneads VI,7,33

Take an example from love: so long as the attention is upon the visible form, love has not entered: when from that outward form the lover elaborates within himself, in his own partless SOUL, an immaterial image, then it is that love is born, then the lover longs for the sight of the beloved to make that fading image live again. If he could but learn to look elsewhere, to the more nearly formless, his longing would be for that: his first experience was loving a great luminary by way of some thin gleam from it. Enneads VI,7,33

Shape is an impress from the unshaped; it is the unshaped that produces shape, not shape the unshaped; and Matter is needed for the producing; Matter, in the nature of things, is the furthest away, since of itself it has not even the lowest degree of shape. Thus lovableness does not belong to Matter but to that which draws upon Form: the Form upon Matter comes by way of SOUL; SOUL is more nearly Form and therefore more lovable; Intellectual-Principle, nearer still, is even more to be loved: by these steps we are led to know that the First Principle, principle of Beauty, must be formless. Enneads VI,7,33

34. No longer can we wonder that the principle evoking such longing should be utterly free from shape. The very SOUL, once it has conceived the straining love towards this, lays aside all the shape it has taken, even to the Intellectual shape that has informed it. There is no vision, no union, for those handling or acting by any thing other; the SOUL must see before it neither evil nor good nor anything else, that alone it may receive the Alone. Enneads VI,7,34

Suppose the SOUL to have attained: the highest has come to her, or rather has revealed its presence; she has turned away from all about her and made herself apt, beautiful to the utmost, brought into likeness with the divine by those preparings and adornings which come unbidden to those growing ready for the vision she has seen that presence suddenly manifesting within her, for there is nothing between: here is no longer a duality but a two in one; for, so long as the presence holds, all distinction fades: it is as lover and beloved here, in a copy of that union, long to blend; the SOUL has now no further awareness of being in body and will give herself no foreign name, not “man,” not “living being,” not “being,” not “all”; any observation of such things falls away; the SOUL has neither time nor taste for them; This she sought and This she has found and on This she looks and not upon herself; and who she is that looks she has not leisure to know. Once There she will barter for This nothing the universe holds; not though one would make over the heavens entire to her; than This there is nothing higher, nothing of more good; above This there is no passing; all the rest, however lofty, lies on the downgoing path: she is of perfect judgement and knows that This was her quest, that nothing higher is. Here can be no deceit; where could she come upon truer than the truth? and the truth she affirms, that she is, herself; but all the affirmation is later and is silent. In this happiness she knows beyond delusion that she is happy; for this is no affirmation of an excited body but of a SOUL become again what she was in the time of her early joy. All that she had welcomed of old-office, power, wealth, beauty, knowledge of all she tells her scorn as she never could had she not found their better; linked to This she can fear no disaster nor even know it; let all about her fall to pieces, so she would have it that she may be wholly with This, so huge the happiness she has won to. Enneads VI,7,34

35. Such in this union is the SOUL’s temper that even the act of Intellect, once so intimately loved, she now dismisses; Intellection is movement and she has no wish to move; she has nothing to say of this very Intellectual-Principle by means of which she has attained the vision, herself made over into Intellectual-Principle and becoming that principle so as to be able to take stand in that Intellectual space. Entered there and making herself over to that, she at first contemplates that realm, but once she sees that higher still she leaves all else aside. Thus when a man enters a house rich in beauty he might gaze about and admire the varied splendour before the master appears; but, face to face with that great person no thing of ornament but calling for the truest attention he would ignore everything else and look only to the master. In this state of absorbed contemplation there is no longer question of holding an object: the vision is continuous so that seeing and seen are one thing; object and act of vision have become identical; of all that until then filled the eye no memory remains. And our comparison would be closer if instead of a man appearing to the visitor who had been admiring the house it were a god, and not a god manifesting to the eyes but one filling the SOUL. Enneads VI,7,35

As for SOUL, it attains that vision by so to speak confounding and annulling the Intellectual-Principle within it; or rather that Principle immanent in SOUL sees first and thence the vision penetrates to SOUL and the two visions become one. Enneads VI,7,35

The SOUL now knows no movement since the Supreme knows none; it is now not even SOUL since the Supreme is not in life but above life; it is no longer Intellectual-Principle, for the Supreme has not Intellection and the likeness must be perfect; this grasping is not even by Intellection, for the Supreme is not known Intellectively. Enneads VI,7,35

To us intellection is a boon since the SOUL needs it; to the Intellectual-Principle it is appropriate as being one thing with the very essence of the principle constituted by the intellectual Act so that principle and act coincide in a continuous self-consciousness carrying the assurance of identity, of the unity of the two. But pure unity must be independent, in need of no such assurance. Enneads VI,7,41

Thus, Intellectual-Principle, finding place in the universe, cannot have place in Him. Where we read that He is the cause of all beauty we are clearly to understand that beauty depends upon the Forms, He being set above all that is beautiful here. The Forms are in that passage secondaries, their sequels being attached to them as dependent thirds: it is clear thus that by “the products of the thirds” is meant this world, dependent upon SOUL. Enneads VI,7,42

SOUL dependent upon Intellectual-Principle and Intellectual-Principle upon the Good, all is linked to the Supreme by intermediaries, some close, some nearing those of the closer attachment, while the order of sense stands remotest, dependent upon SOUL. Enneads VI,7,42

What then do we mean when we speak of freedom in ourselves and why do we question it? My own reading is that, moving as we do amid adverse fortunes, compulsions, violent assaults of passion crushing the SOUL, feeling ourselves mastered by these experiences, playing slave to them, going where they lead, we have been brought by all this to doubt whether we are anything at all and dispose of ourselves in any particular. Enneads VI,8,1

Where the appetites are dictated by the very nature they are the desires of the conjoint of SOUL and body and then SOUL lies under physical compulsions: if they spring in the SOUL as an independent, then much that we take to be voluntary is in reality outside of our free act. Further, every emotion is preceded by some meagre reasoning; how then can a compelling imagination, an appetite drawing us where it will, be supposed to leave us masters in the ensuing act? Need, inexorably craving satisfaction, is not free in face of that to which it is forced: and how at all can a thing have efficiency of its own when it rises from an extern, has an extern for very principle, thence taking its Being as it stands? It lives by that extern, lives as it has been moulded: if this be freedom, there is freedom in even the soulless; fire acts in accordance with its characteristic being. Enneads VI,8,2

We may be reminded that the Living Form and the SOUL know what they do. But, if this is knowledge by perception, it does not help towards the freedom of the act; perception gives awareness, not mastery: if true knowing is meant, either this is the knowing of something happening once more awareness with the motive force still to seek, or the reasoning and knowledge have acted to quell the appetite; then we have to ask to what this repression is to be referred and where it has taken place. If it is that the mental process sets up an opposing desire we must assure ourselves how; if it merely stills the appetite with no further efficiency and this is our freedom, then freedom does not depend upon act but is a thing of the mind and in truth all that has to do with act, the very most reasonable, is still of mixed value and cannot carry freedom. Enneads VI,8,2

5. Are we, however, to make freedom and self-disposal exclusive to Intellectual-Principle as engaged in its characteristic Act, Intellectual-Principle unassociated, or do they belong also to SOUL acting under that guidance and performing act of virtue? If freedom is to be allowed to SOUL in its Act, it certainly cannot be allowed in regard to issue, for we are not master of events: if in regard to fine conduct and all inspired by Intellectual-Principle, that may very well be freedom; but is the freedom ours? Because there is war, we perform some brave feat; how is that our free act since had there been no war it could not have been performed? So in all cases of fine conduct; there is always some impinging event leading out our quality to show itself in this or that act. And suppose virtue itself given the choice whether to find occasion for its exercise war evoking courage; wrong, so that it may establish justice and good order; poverty that it may show independence or to remain inactive, everything going well, it would choose the peace of inaction, nothing calling for its intervention, just as a physician like Hippocrates would prefer no one to stand in need of his skill. Enneads VI,8,5

If thus virtue whose manifestation requires action becomes inevitably a collaborator under compulsion, how can it have untrammelled self-disposal? Should we, perhaps, distinguish between compulsion in the act and freedom in the preceding will and reasoning? But in setting freedom in those preceding functions, we imply that virtue has a freedom and self-disposal apart from all act; then we must state what is the reality of the self-disposal attributed to virtue as state or disposition. Are we to put it that virtue comes in to restore the disordered SOUL, taming passions and appetites? In what sense, at that, can we hold our goodness to be our own free act, our fine conduct to be uncompelled? In that we will and adopt, in that this entry of virtue prepares freedom and self-disposal, ending our slavery to the masters we have been obeying. If then virtue is, as it were, a second Intellectual-Principle, and heightens the SOUL to Intellectual quality, then, once more, our freedom is found to lie not in act but in Intellectual-Principle immune from act. Enneads VI,8,5

6. How then did we come to place freedom in the will when we made out free action to be that produced or as we also indicated, suppressed at the dictate of will? If what we have been saying is true and our former statement is consistent with it, the case must stand thus: Virtue and Intellectual-Principle are sovereign and must be held the sole foundation of our self-disposal and freedom; both then are free; Intellectual-Principle is self-confined: Virtue, in its government of the SOUL which it seeks to lift into goodness, would wish to be free; in so far as it does so it is free and confers freedom; but inevitably experiences and actions are forced upon it by its governance: these it has not planned for, yet when they do arise it will watch still for its sovereignty calling these also to judgement. Virtue does not follow upon occurrences as a saver of the emperilled; at its discretion it sacrifices a man; it may decree the jettison of life, means, children, country even; it looks to its own high aim and not to the safeguarding of anything lower. Thus our freedom of act, our self-disposal, must be referred not to the doing, not to the external thing done but to the inner activity, to the Intellection, to virtue’s own vision. Enneads VI,8,6

7. SOUL becomes free when it moves, through Intellectual-Principle, towards The Good; what it does in that spirit is its free act; Intellectual-Principle is free in its own right. That principle of Good is the sole object of desire and the source of self-disposal to the rest, to SOUL when it fully attains, to Intellectual-Principle by connate possession. Enneads VI,8,7

12. Yet, is not God what He is? Can He, then, be master of being what He is or master to stand above Being? The mind utterly reluctant returns to its doubt: some further considerations, therefore, must be offered: In us the individual, viewed as body, is far from reality; by SOUL which especially constitutes the being we participate in reality, are in some degree real. This is a compound state, a mingling of Reality and Difference, not, therefore reality in the strictest sense, not reality pure. Thus far we are not masters of our being; in some sense the reality in us is one thing and we another. We are not masters of our being; the real in us is the master, since that is the principle establishing our characteristic difference; yet we are again in some sense that which is sovereign in us and so even on this level might in spite of all be described as self-disposing. Enneads VI,8,12

14. Another approach: Everything to which existence may be attributed is either one with its essence or distinct from it. Thus any given man is distinct from essential man though belonging to the order Man: a SOUL and a SOUL’s essence are the same that is, in case of SOUL pure and unmingled Man as type is the same as man’s essence; where the thing, man, and the essence are different, the particular man may be considered as accidental; but man, the essence, cannot be so; the type, Man, has Real Being. Now if the essence of man is real, not chanced or accidental, how can we think That to be accidental which transcends the order man, author of the type, source of all being, a principle more nearly simplex than man’s being or being of any kind? As we approach the simplex, accident recedes; what is utterly simplex accident never touches at all. Enneads VI,8,14

One seeing That as it really is will lay aside all reasoning upon it and simply state it as the self-existent; such that if it had essence that essence would be subject to it and, so to speak, derived from it; none that has seen would dare to talk of its “happening to be,” or indeed be able to utter word. With all his courage he would stand astounded, unable at any venture to speak of This, with the vision everywhere before the eyes of the SOUL so that, look where one may, there it is seen unless one deliberately look away, ignoring God, thinking no more upon Him. So we are to understand the Beyond-Essence darkly indicated by the ancients: is not merely that He generated Essence but that He is subject neither to Essence nor to Himself; His essence is not His Principle; He is Principle to Essence and not for Himself did He make it; producing it He left it outside of Himself: He had no need of being who brought it to be. Thus His making of being is no “action in accordance with His being.” Enneads VI,8,19

Health, similarly, is the condition of a body acting as a co-ordinate unity. Beauty appears when limbs and features are controlled by this principle, unity. Moral excellence is of a SOUL acting as a concordant total, brought to unity. Enneads VI,9,1

Come thus to SOUL which brings all to unity, making, moulding, shaping, ranging to order there is a temptation to say “SOUL is the bestower of unity; SOUL therefore is the unity.” But SOUL bestows other characteristics upon material things and yet remains distinct from its gift: shape, Ideal-Form and the rest are all distinct from the giving SOUL; so, clearly, with this gift of unity; SOUL to make things unities looks out upon the unity just as it makes man by looking upon Man, realizing in the man the unity belonging to Man. Enneads VI,9,1

Anything that can be described as a unity is so in the precise degree in which it holds a characteristic being; the less or more the degree of the being, the less or more the unity. SOUL, while distinct from unity’s very self, is a thing of the greater unity in proportion as it is of the greater, the authentic, being. Absolute unity it is not: it is SOUL and one SOUL, the unity in some sense a concomitant; there are two things, SOUL and SOUL’s unity as there is body with body’s unity. The looser aggregates, such as a choir, are furthest from unity, the more compact are the nearer; SOUL is nearer yet but still a participant. Enneads VI,9,1

Is SOUL to be identified with unity on the ground that unless it were one thing it could not be SOUL? No; unity is equally necessary to every other thing, yet unity stands distinct from them; body and unity are not identical; body, too; is still a participant. Enneads VI,9,1

Besides, the SOUL, even the collective SOUL for all its absence of part, is a manifold: it has diverse powers reasoning, desiring, perceiving all held together by this chain of unity. Itself a unity, SOUL confers unity, but also accepts it. Enneads VI,9,1

The SOUL or mind reaching towards the formless finds itself incompetent to grasp where nothing bounds it or to take impression where the impinging reality is diffuse; in sheer dread of holding to nothingness, it slips away. The state is painful; often it seeks relief by retreating from all this vagueness to the region of sense, there to rest as on solid ground, just as the sight distressed by the minute rests with pleasure on the bold. Enneads VI,9,3

SOUL must see in its own way; this is by coalescence, unification; but in seeking thus to know the Unity it is prevented by that very unification from recognising that it has found; it cannot distinguish itself from the object of this intuition. Nonetheless, this is our one resource if our philosophy is to give us knowledge of The Unity. Enneads VI,9,3

We are in search of unity; we are to come to know the principle of all, the Good and First; therefore we may not stand away from the realm of Firsts and lie prostrate among the lasts: we must strike for those Firsts, rising from things of sense which are the lasts. Cleared of all evil in our intention towards The Good, we must ascend to the Principle within ourselves; from many, we must become one; only so do we attain to knowledge of that which is Principle and Unity. We shape ourselves into Intellectual-Principle; we make over our SOUL in trust to Intellectual-Principle and set it firmly in That; thus what That sees the SOUL will waken to see; it is through the Intellectual-Principle that we have this vision of The Unity; it must be our care to bring over nothing whatever from sense, to allow nothing even of SOUL to enter into Intellectual-Principle: with Intellect pure, and with the summit of Intellect, we are to see the All-Pure. Enneads VI,9,3

Generative of all, The Unity is none of all; neither thing nor quantity nor quality nor intellect nor SOUL; not in motion, not at rest, not in place, not in time: it is the self-defined, unique in form or, better, formless, existing before Form was, or Movement or Rest, all of which are attachments of Being and make Being the manifold it is. Enneads VI,9,3

4. The main part of the difficulty is that awareness of this Principle comes neither by knowing nor by the Intellection that discovers the Intellectual Beings but by a presence overpassing all knowledge. In knowing, SOUL or mind abandons its unity; it cannot remain a simplex: knowing is taking account of things; that accounting is multiple; the mind, thus plunging into number and multiplicity, departs from unity. Enneads VI,9,4

There are those that have not attained to see. The SOUL has not come to know the splendour There; it has not felt and clutched to itself that love-passion of vision known to lover come to rest where he loves. Or struck perhaps by that authentic light, all the SOUL lit by the nearness gained, we have gone weighted from beneath; the vision is frustrate; we should go without burden and we go carrying that which can but keep us back; we are not yet made over into unity. Enneads VI,9,4

5. Those to whom existence comes about by chance and automatic action and is held together by material forces have drifted far from God and from the concept of unity; we are not here addressing them but only such as accept another nature than body and have some conception of SOUL. Enneads VI,9,5

SOUL must be sounded to the depths, understood as an emanation from Intellectual-Principle and as holding its value by a Reason-Principle thence infused. Next this Intellect must be apprehended, an Intellect other than the reasoning faculty known as the rational principle; with reasoning we are already in the region of separation and movement: our sciences are Reason-Principles lodged in SOUL or mind, having manifestly acquired their character by the presence in the SOUL of Intellectual-Principle, source of all knowing. Enneads VI,9,5

Thus we come to see Intellectual-Principle almost as an object of sense: the Intellectual Kosmos is perceptible as standing above SOUL, father to SOUL: we know Intellectual-Principle as the motionless, not subject to change, containing, we must think, all things; a multiple but at once indivisible and comporting difference. It is not discriminate as are the Reason-Principles, which can in fact be known one by one: yet its content is not a confusion; every item stands forth distinctly, just as in a science the entire content holds as an indivisible and yet each item is a self-standing verity. Enneads VI,9,5

Now a plurality thus concentrated like the Intellectual Kosmos is close upon The First and reason certifies its existence as surely as that of SOUL yet, though of higher sovereignty than SOUL, it is not The First since it is not a unity, not simplex as unity, principle over all multiplicity, must be. Enneads VI,9,5

7. If the mind reels before something thus alien to all we know, we must take our stand on the things of this realm and strive thence to see. But, in the looking, beware of throwing outward; this Principle does not lie away somewhere leaving the rest void; to those of power to reach, it is present; to the inapt, absent. In our daily affairs we cannot hold an object in mind if we have given ourselves elsewhere, occupied upon some other matter; that very thing must be before us to be truly the object of observation. So here also; preoccupied by the impress of something else, we are withheld under that pressure from becoming aware of The Unity; a mind gripped and fastened by some definite thing cannot take the print of the very contrary. As Matter, it is agreed, must be void of quality in order to accept the types of the universe, so and much more must the SOUL be kept formless if there is to be no infixed impediment to prevent it being brimmed and lit by the Primal Principle. Enneads VI,9,7

8. Every SOUL that knows its history is aware, also, that its movement, unthwarted, is not that of an outgoing line; its natural course may be likened to that in which a circle turns not upon some external but on its own centre, the point to which it owes its rise. The SOUL’s movement will be about its source; to this it will hold, poised intent towards that unity to which all souls should move and the divine souls always move, divine in virtue of that movement; for to be a god is to be integral with the Supreme; what stands away is man still multiple, or beast. Enneads VI,9,8

Is then this “centre” of our souls the Principle for which we are seeking? We must look yet further: we must admit a Principle in which all these centres coincide: it will be a centre by analogy with the centre of the circle we know. The SOUL is not a circle in the sense of the geometric figure but in that it at once contains the Primal Nature [as centre] and is contained by it [as circumference], that it owes its origin to such a centre and still more that the SOUL, uncontaminated, is a self-contained entity. Enneads VI,9,8

9. In this choiring, the SOUL looks upon the wellspring of Life, wellspring also of Intellect, beginning of Being, fount of Good, root of SOUL. It is not that these are poured out from the Supreme lessening it as if it were a thing of mass. At that the emanants would be perishable; but they are eternal; they spring from an eternal principle, which produces them not by its fragmentation but in virtue of its intact identity: therefore they too hold firm; so long as the sun shines, so long there will be light. Enneads VI,9,9

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,9,9

That our good is There is shown by the very love inborn with the SOUL; hence the constant linking of the Love-God with the Psyches in story and picture; the SOUL, other than God but sprung of Him, must needs love. So long as it is There, it holds the heavenly love; here its love is the baser; There the SOUL is Aphrodite of the heavens; here, turned harlot, Aphrodite of the public ways: yet the SOUL is always an Aphrodite. This is the intention of the myth which tells of Aphrodite’s birth and Eros born with her. Enneads VI,9,9

The SOUL in its nature loves God and longs to be at one with Him in the noble love of a daughter for a noble father; but coming to human birth and lured by the courtships of this sphere, she takes up with another love, a mortal, leaves her father and falls. Enneads VI,9,9

Those to whom all this experience is strange may understand by way of our earthly longings and the joy we have in winning to what we most desire remembering always that here what we love is perishable, hurtful, that our loving is of mimicries and turns awry because all was a mistake, our good was not here, this was not what we sought; There only is our veritable love and There we may hold it and be with it, possess it in its verity no longer submerged in alien flesh. Any that have seen know what I have in mind: the SOUL takes another life as it approaches God; thus restored it feels that the dispenser of true life is There to see, that now we have nothing to look for but, far otherwise, that we must put aside all else and rest in This alone, This become, This alone, all the earthly environment done away, in haste to be free, impatient of any bond holding us to the baser, so that with our being entire we may cling about This, no part in us remaining but through it we have touch with God. Enneads VI,9,9

10. But how comes the SOUL not to keep that ground? Because it has not yet escaped wholly: but there will be the time of vision unbroken, the self hindered no longer by any hindrance of body. Not that those hindrances beset that in us which has veritably seen; it is the other phase of the SOUL that suffers and that only when we withdraw from vision and take to knowing by proof, by evidence, by the reasoning processes of the mental habit. Such logic is not to be confounded with that act of ours in the vision; it is not our reason that has seen; it is something greater than reason, reason’s Prior, as far above reason as the very object of that thought must be. Enneads VI,9,10

It is not in the SOUL’s nature to touch utter nothingness; the lowest descent is into evil and, so far, into non-being: but to utter nothing, never. When the SOUL begins again to mount, it comes not to something alien but to its very self; thus detached, it is not in nothingness but in itself; self-gathered it is no longer in the order of being; it is in the Supreme. Enneads VI,9,11