MacKenna-Plotinus: souls

  

See also: soul, Soul.

What do you feel in presence of the grace you discern in actions, in manners, in sound morality, in all the works and fruits of virtue, in the beauty of souls? ENNEADS  : I. VI. 5

Therefore the Soul must be trained — to the habit of remarking, first, all noble pursuits, then the works of beauty produced not by the labour of the arts but by the virtue of men known for their goodness: lastly, you must search the souls of those that have shaped these beautiful forms. ENNEADS: I. VI. 9

In other words, the celestial soul — and our souls with it — springs directly next from the Creator, while the animal life of this earth is produced by an image which goes forth from that celestial soul and may be said to flow downwards from it. ENNEADS: II I. 5

Why then do not all souls [i e, the lower, also, as those of men and animals] thus circle about the Godhead? ENNEADS: II II. 2

Can it be waiting for certain souls still here? ENNEADS: II IX. 4

Their own soul, the soul of the least of mankind, they declare deathless, divine; but the entire heavens and the stars within the heavens have had no communion with the Immortal Principle, though these are far purer and lovelier than their own souls — yet they are not blind to the order, the shapely pattern, the discipline prevailing in the heavens, since they are the loudest in complaint of the disorder that troubles our earth. ENNEADS: II IX. 5

If all comes to states of the Soul — "Repentance" when it has undergone a change of purpose; "Impressions" when it contemplates not the Authentic Existences but their simulacra — there is nothing here but a jargon invented to make a case for their school: all this terminology is piled up only to conceal their debt to the ancient Greek philosophy which taught, clearly and without bombast, the ascent from the cave and the gradual advance of souls to a truer and truer vision. ENNEADS: II IX. 6

They hope to get the credit of minute and exact identification by setting up a plurality of intellectual Essences; but in reality this multiplication lowers the Intellectual Nature to the level of the Sense-Kind: their true course is to seek to reduce number to the least possible in the Supreme, simply referring all things to the Second Hypostasis — which is all that exists as it is Primal Intellect and Reality and is the only thing that is good except only for the first Nature — and to recognize Soul as the third Principle, accounting for the difference among souls merely by diversity of experience and character. ENNEADS: II IX. 6

No: this thing that has come into Being is the Kosmos complete: do but survey it, and surely this is the pleading you will hear: I am made by a God: from that God I came perfect above all forms of life, adequate to my function, self-sufficing, lacking nothing: for I am the container of all, that is, of every plant and every animal, of all the Kinds of created things, and many Gods and nations of Spirit-Beings and lofty souls and men happy in their goodness. ENNEADS: III II. 3

And, further — unless all Reason-Principles are Souls — why should some be souls and others exclusively Reason-Principles when the All is itself a Soul? ENNEADS: III II. 18

Now everyone recognizes that the emotional state for which we make this "Love" responsible rises in souls aspiring to be knit in the closest union with some beautiful object, and that this aspiration takes two forms, that of the good whose devotion is for beauty itself, and that other which seeks its consummation in some vile act. ENNEADS: III V. 1

The existence of such a being is no demand of the ordinary man, merely; it is supported by Theologians and, over and over again, by Plato to whom Eros is child of Aphrodite, minister of beautiful children, inciter of human souls towards the supernal beauty or quickener of an already existing impulse thither. ENNEADS: III V. 2

And if we take the male gods to represent the Intellectual Powers and the female gods to be their souls — to every Intellectual Principle its companion Soul — we are forced, thus also, to make Aphrodite the Soul of Zeus; and the identification is confirmed by Priests and Theologians who consider Aphrodite and Hera one and the same and call Aphrodite’s star the star of Hera. ENNEADS: III V. 8

In the Intellectual Kosmos dwells Authentic Essence, with the Intellectual-Principle [Divine Mind] as the noblest of its content, but containing also souls, since every soul in this lower sphere has come thence: that is the world of unembodied spirits while to our world belong those that have entered body and undergone bodily division. ENNEADS: IV I. 1

There the Intellectual-Principle is a concentrated all — nothing of it distinguished or divided — and in that kosmos of unity all souls are concentrated also, with no spatial discrimination. ENNEADS: IV I. 1

If it had the nature of body it would consist of isolated members each unaware of the conditions of every other; there would be a particular soul — say a soul of the finger — answering as a distinct and independent entity to every local experience; in general terms, there would be a multiplicity of souls administering each individual; and, moreover, the universe would be governed not by one soul but by an incalculable number, each standing apart to itself. ENNEADS: IV II. 2

For the moment we return to our argument against those who maintain our souls to be offshoots from the soul of the universe [parts and an identity modally parted]. ENNEADS: IV III. 1

It is admitted on clear evidence that we are borne along by the Circuit of the All; we will be told that — taking character and destiny from it, strictly inbound with it — we must derive our souls, also, from what thus bears us up, and that as within ourselves every part absorbs from our soul so, analogically, we, standing as parts to the universe, absorb from the Soul of the All as parts of it. ENNEADS: IV III. 1

The soul is not a thing of quantity; we are not to conceive of the All-Soul as some standard ten with particular souls as its constituent units. ENNEADS: IV III. 2

But it is admitted that all souls are alike and are entireties; clearly, soul is not subject to part in the sense in which magnitudes are: our opponents themselves would not consent to the notion of the All-Soul being whittled down into fragments, yet this is what they would be doing, annulling the All-Soul — if any collective soul existed at all — making it a mere piece of terminology, thinking of it like wine separated into many portions, each portion, in its jar, being described as a portion of the total thing, wine. ENNEADS: IV III. 2

No; in such a relationship the All-Soul, of which the particular souls are to be a part, would not be the soul of any definite thing, but an entity standing aloof; that means that it would not even be the soul of the Kosmos; it would, in fact, be, itself, one of those partial souls; thus all alike would be partial and of one nature; and, at that, there would be no reason for making any such distinction. ENNEADS: IV III. 2

There is no such difficulty in the case of the Intellectual-Principle; by the primal differentiation, this separates, no doubt, into partial things of widely varying nature, but eternal unity is secured by virtue of the eternal identity of that Essence: it is not so easy to explain how, in the case of the soul described as separate among bodies, such differentiated souls can remain one thing. ENNEADS: IV III. 4

A possible solution may be offered: The unit soul holds aloof, not actually falling into body; the differentiated souls — the All-Soul, with the others — issue from the unity while still constituting, within certain limits, an association. ENNEADS: IV III. 4

The All-Soul would always remain above, since essentially it has nothing to do with descent or with the lower, or with any tendency towards this sphere: the other souls would become ours [become "partial," individual in us] because their lot is cast for this sphere, and because they are solicited by a thing [the body] which invites their care. ENNEADS: IV III. 4

But what place is left for the particular souls, yours and mine and another’s? ENNEADS: IV III. 5

It is exactly so with the souls. ENNEADS: IV III. 5

To return, then: how and why has the All-Soul produced a kosmos, while the particular souls simply administer some one part of it? ENNEADS: IV III. 6

The answer might be that there is an even greater difference among these souls, the one never having fallen away from the All-Soul, but dwelling within it and assuming body therein, while the others received their allotted spheres when the body was already in existence, when their sister soul was already in rule and, as it were, had already prepared habitations for them. ENNEADS: IV III. 6

Again, the reason may be that the one [the creative All-Soul] looks towards the universal Intellectual-Principle [the exemplar of all that can be], while the others are more occupied with the Intellectual within themselves, that which is already of the sphere of part; perhaps, too, these also could have created, but that they were anticipated by that originator — the work accomplished before them — an impediment inevitable whichsoever of the souls were first to operate. ENNEADS: IV III. 6

But it is safer to account for the creative act by nearer connection with the over-world; the souls whose tendency is exercised within the Supreme have the greater power; immune in that pure seat they create securely; for the greater power takes the least hurt from the material within which it operates; and this power remains enduringly attached to the over-world: it creates, therefore, self gathered and the created things gather round it; the other souls, on the contrary, themselves go forth; that can mean only that they have deserted towards the abyss; a main phase in them is drawn downward and pulls them with it in the desire towards the lower. ENNEADS: IV III. 6

The "secondary and tertiary souls," of which we hear, must be understood in the sense of closer or remoter position: it is much as in ourselves the relation to the Supreme is not identical from soul to soul; some of us are capable of becoming Uniate, others of striving and almost attaining, while a third rank is much less apt; it is a matter of the degree or powers of the soul by which our expression is determined — the first degree dominant in the one person, the second, the third [the merely animal life] in others while, still, all of us contain all the powers ENNEADS: IV III. 6

So far, so good: but what of the passage in the Philebus   taken to imply that the other souls are parts of the All-Soul? ENNEADS: IV III. 7

He makes his teaching quite clear in the Timaeus  , where he shows us the other souls brought into existence after the All-Soul, but compounded from the same mixing bowl"; secondary and tertiary are duly marked off from the primal but every form of soul is presented as being of identical ideal-nature with the All-Soul. ENNEADS: IV III. 7

As for our souls being entrained in the kosmic circuit, and taking character and condition thence; this is no indication that they are parts: soul-nature may very well take some tincture from even the qualities of place, from water and from air; residence in this city or in that, and the varying make-up of the body may have their influence [upon our human souls which, yet, are no parts of place or of body]. ENNEADS: IV III. 7

As regards the nature of soul in general, the differences have been defined in the passage in which we mentioned the secondary and tertiary orders and laid down that, while all souls are all-comprehensive, each ranks according to its operative phase — one becoming Uniate in the achieved fact, another in knowledge, another in desire, according to the distinct orientation by which each is, or tends to become, what it looks upon. ENNEADS: IV III. 8

The very fulfillment and perfectionment attainable by souls cannot but be different. ENNEADS: IV III. 8

This means that it is no external limit that defines the individual being or the extension of souls any more than of God; on the contrary each in right of its own power is all that it chooses to be: and we are not to think of it as going forth from itself [losing its unity by any partition]: the fact is simply that the element within it, which is apt to entrance into body, has the power of immediate projection any whither: the soul is certainly not wrenched asunder by its presence at once in foot and in finger. ENNEADS: IV III. 8

This new ensouling does not mean, however, an increase in the number of souls: all depend from the one or, rather, all remains one: it is as with ourselves; some elements are shed, others grow in their place; the soul abandons the discarded and flows into the newcoming as long as the one soul of the man holds its ground; in the All the one soul holds its ground for ever; its distinct contents now retain soul and now reject it, but the total of spiritual beings is unaffected. ENNEADS: IV III. 8

The souls of men, seeing their images in the mirror of Dionysus as it were, have entered into that realm in a leap downward from the Supreme: yet even they are not cut off from their origin, from the divine Intellect; it is not that they have come bringing the Intellectual Principle down in their fall; it is that though they have descended even to earth, yet their higher part holds for ever above the heavens. ENNEADS: IV III. 12

And thus the kosmic content is carried forward to its purpose, everything in its co-ordinate place, under one only Reason-Principle operating alike in the descent and return of souls and to every purpose of the system. ENNEADS: IV III. 12

Such a consonance can have been procured in one only way: The All must, in every detail of act and experience, be an expression of the Supreme, which must dominate alike its periods and its stable ordering and the life-careers varying with the movement of the souls as they are sometimes absorbed in that highest, sometimes in the heavens, sometimes turned to the things and places of our earth. ENNEADS: IV III. 12

Thus it comes about that this kosmos, lit with many lights, gleaming in its souls, receives still further graces, gifts from here and from there, from the gods of the Supreme, and from those other Intellectual-Principles whose nature it is to ensoul. ENNEADS: IV III. 14

The souls peering forth from the Intellectual Realm descend first to the heavens and there put on a body; this becomes at once the medium by which as they reach out more and more towards magnitude [physical extension] they proceed to bodies progressively more earthy. ENNEADS: IV III. 15

All the souls, then, shine down upon the heavens and spend there the main of themselves and the best; only their lower phases illuminate the lower realms; and those souls which descend deepest show their light furthest down — not themselves the better for the depth to which they have penetrated. ENNEADS: IV III. 17

Thus all begins with the great light, shining self-centred; in accordance with the reigning plan [that of emanation] this gives forth its brilliance; the later [divine] existents [souls] add their radiation — some of them remaining above, while there are some that are drawn further downward, attracted by the splendour of the object they illuminate. ENNEADS: IV III. 17

These last find that their charges need more and more care: the steersman of a storm-tossed ship is so intent on saving it that he forgets his own interest and never thinks that he is recurrently in peril of being dragged down with the vessel; similarly the souls are intent upon contriving for their charges and finally come to be pulled down by them; they are fettered in bonds of sorcery, gripped and held by their concern for the realm of Nature. ENNEADS: IV III. 17

But if souls in the Supreme operate without reasoning, how can they be called reasoning souls? ENNEADS: IV III. 18

As for the Celestials [the Daimones] and souls in the air, they may well use speech; for all such are simply Animate [= Beings]. ENNEADS: IV III. 18

Souls, body-bound, are apt to body-punishment; clean souls no longer drawing to themselves at any point any vestige of body are, by their very being, outside the bodily sphere; body-free, containing nothing of body — there where Essence is, and Being, and the Divine within the Divinity, among Those, within That, such a soul must be. ENNEADS: IV III. 24

Now comes the question, equally calling for an answer, whether those souls that have quitted the places of earth retain memory of their lives — all souls or some, of all things, or of some things, and, again, for ever or merely for some period not very long after their withdrawal. ENNEADS: IV III. 25

The Soul-action which is to be observed seems to have induced the Ancients to ascribe memory, and "Recollection," [the Platonic Anamnesis] to souls bringing into outward manifestation the ideas they contain: we see at once that the memory here indicated is another kind; it is a memory outside of time. ENNEADS: IV III. 25

Memory must be admitted in both of these, personal memories and shared memories; and when the two souls are together, the memories also are as one; when they stand apart, assuming that both exist and endure, each soon for gets the other’s affairs, retaining for a longer time its own. ENNEADS: IV III. 27

Thus it is that the Shade of Hercules in the lower regions — this "Shade," as I take it, being the characteristically human part — remembers all the action and experience of the life, since that career was mainly of the hero’s personal shaping; the other souls [soulphases] going to constitute the joint-being could, for all their different standing, have nothing to recount but the events of that same life, doings which they knew from the time of their association: perhaps they would add also some moral judgement. ENNEADS: IV III. 27

Now that is all very well as long as the two souls stand apart; but, when they are at one in us, what becomes of the two faculties, and in which of them is the imaging faculty vested? ENNEADS: IV III. 31

And if both orders of image act upon both orders of soul, what difference is there in the souls; and how does the fact escape our knowledge? ENNEADS: IV III. 31

The answer is that, when the two souls chime each with each, the two imaging faculties no longer stand apart; the union is dominated by the more powerful of the faculties of the soul, and thus the image perceived is as one: the less powerful is like a shadow attending upon the dominant, like a minor light merging into a greater: when they are in conflict, in discord, the minor is distinctly apart, a self-standing thing — though its isolation is not perceived, for the simple reason that the separate being of the two souls escapes observation. ENNEADS: IV III. 31

A soul that has descended from the Intellectual region to the celestial and there comes to rest, may very well be understood to recognize many other souls known in its former state supposing that, as we have said, it retains recollection of much that it knew here. ENNEADS: IV IV. 5

This recognition would be natural if the bodies with which those souls are vested in the celestial must reproduce the former appearance; supposing the spherical form [of the stars inhabited by souls in the mid-realm] means a change of appearance, recognition would go by character, by the distinctive quality of personality: this is not fantastic; conditions changing need not mean a change of character. ENNEADS: IV IV. 5

If the souls have mutual conversation, this too would mean recognition. ENNEADS: IV IV. 5

But what way of remembering the Supreme is left if the souls have turned to the sense-known kosmos, and are to fall into this sphere of process? ENNEADS: IV IV. 5

Souls that descend, souls that change their state — these, then, may be said to have memory, which deals with what has come and gone; but what subjects of remembrance can there be for souls whose lot is to remain unchanged? ENNEADS: IV IV. 6

Ah, no: it is that they see God still and always, and that, as long as they see, they cannot tell themselves they have had the vision; such reminiscence is for souls that have lost it. ENNEADS: IV IV. 6

If the stars live a blessed life in their vision of the life inherent in their souls, and if, by force of their souls’ tendency to become one, and by the light they cast from themselves upon the entire heavens, they are like the strings of a lyre which, being struck in tune, sing a melody in some natural scale... ENNEADS: IV IV. 8

Can we escape by the theory that, while human souls — receptive of change, even to the change of imperfection and lack — are in time, yet the Soul of the All, as the author of time, is itself timeless? ENNEADS: IV IV. 15

The answer must be that the realm it engenders is not that of eternal things but a realm of things enveloped in time: it is just as the souls [under, or included in, the All-Soul] are not in time, but some of their experiences and productions are. ENNEADS: IV IV. 15

But in the case of the soul it is a question whether the secondary phases follow their priors — the derivatives their sources — or whether every phase is self-governing, isolated from its predecessors and able to stand alone; in a word, whether no part of the soul is sundered from the total, but all the souls are simultaneously one soul and many, and, if so, by what mode; this question, however, is treated elsewhere. ENNEADS: IV IV. 29

Thus the stars, in so far as they are parts, can be affected and yet are immune on various counts; their will, like that of the All, is untouched, just as their bodies and their characteristic natures are beyond all reach of harm; if they give by means of their souls, their souls lose nothing; their bodies remain unchanged or, if there is ebb or inflow, it is of something going unfelt and coming unawares. ENNEADS: IV IV. 42

It is therefore within reason that the souls, also, of the All should have their changes, not retaining unbrokenly the same quality, but ranged in some analogy with their action and experience — some taking rank as head and some as foot in a disposition consonant with the Universal Being which has its degrees in better and less good. ENNEADS: IV IV. 45

Fire, air, water, earth, are in themselves soulless — whenever soul is in any of them, that life is borrowed — and there are no other forms of body than these four: even the school that believes there are has always held them to be bodies, not souls, and to be without life. ENNEADS: IV VII. 2

Each separate part of the body, entering as a distinct entity into the total, would require a distinct soul [its own accord or note], so that there would be many souls to each person. ENNEADS: IV VII. 8

It is because we see everywhere the spoiled souls of the great mass that it becomes difficult to recognize their divinity and immortality. ENNEADS: IV VII. 10

(19) As for the souls of the other living beings, fallen to the degree of entering brute bodies, these too must be immortal. ENNEADS: IV VII. 14

If we are told that man’s soul being tripartite must as a compound entity be dissolved, our answer shall be that pure souls upon their emancipation will put away all that has fastened to them at birth, all that increment which the others will long retain. ENNEADS: IV VII. 14

(20) Thus far we have offered the considerations appropriate to those asking for demonstration: those whose need is conviction by evidence of the more material order are best met from the abundant records relevant to the subject: there are also the oracles of the Gods ordering the appeasing of wronged souls and the honouring of the dead as still sentient, a practice common to all mankind: and again, not a few souls, once among men, have continued to serve them after quitting the body and by revelations, practically helpful, make clear, as well, that the other souls, too, have not ceased to be. ENNEADS: IV VII. 15

Empedocles   — where he says that it is law for faulty souls to descend to this sphere, and that he himself was here because he turned a deserter, wandered from God, in slavery to a raving discord — reveals neither more nor less than Pythagoras   and his school seem to me to convey on this as on many other matters; but in his case, versification has some part in the obscurity. ENNEADS: IV VIII. 1

In the Phaedrus   he makes a failing of the wings the cause of the entry to this realm: and there are Periods which send back the soul after it has risen; there are judgements and lots and fates and necessities driving other souls down to this order. ENNEADS: IV VIII. 1

like our souls, which it may be, are such that governing their inferior, the body, they must sink deeper and deeper into it if they are to control it. ENNEADS: IV VIII. 2

Where we read that the souls or stars stand to their bodily forms as the All to the material forms within it — for these starry bodies are declared to be members of the soul’s circuit — we are given to understand that the star-souls also enjoy the blissful condition of transcendence and immunity that becomes them. ENNEADS: IV VIII. 2

In the same way there must be both many souls and one, the one being the source of the differing many just as from one genus there rise various species, better and worse, some of the more intellectual order, others less effectively so. ENNEADS: IV VIII. 3

So it is with the individual souls; the appetite for the divine Intellect urges them to return to their source, but they have, too, a power apt to administration in this lower sphere; they may be compared to the light attached upwards to the sun, but not grudging its presidency to what lies beneath it. ENNEADS: IV VIII. 4

In the Intellectual, then, they remain with soul-entire, and are immune from care and trouble; in the heavenly sphere, absorbed in the soul-entire, they are administrators with it just as kings, associated with the supreme ruler and governing with him, do not descend from their kingly stations: the souls indeed [as distinguished from the kosmos] are thus far in the one place with their overlord; but there comes a stage at which they descend from the universal to become partial and self-centred; in a weary desire of standing apart they find their way, each to a place of its very own. ENNEADS: IV VIII. 4

Something besides a unity there must be or all would be indiscernibly buried, shapeless within that unbroken whole: none of the real beings [of the Intellectual Kosmos] would exist if that unity remained at halt within itself: the plurality of these beings, offspring of the unity, could not exist without their own nexts taking the outward path; these are the beings holding the rank of souls. ENNEADS: IV VIII. 6

In the same way the outgoing process could not end with the souls, their issue stifled: every Kind must produce its next; it must unfold from some concentrated central principle as from a seed, and so advance to its term in the varied forms of sense. ENNEADS: IV VIII. 6

To individual souls such divine operation takes place only at one of their phases and by a temporal process when from the lower in which they reside they turn towards the noblest; but that soul, which we know as the All-Soul, has never entered the lower activity, but, immune from evil, has the property of knowing its lower by inspection, while it still cleaves continuously to the beings above itself; thus its double task becomes possible; it takes thence and, since as soul it cannot escape touching this sphere, it gives hither. ENNEADS: IV VIII. 7

The souls that have gone into division and become appropriated to some thing partial have also their transcendent phase, but are preoccupied by sensation, and in the mere fact of exercising perception they take in much that clashes with their nature and brings distress and trouble since the object of their concern is partial, deficient, exposed to many alien influences, filled with desires of its own and taking its pleasure, that pleasure which is its lure. ENNEADS: IV VIII. 8

Ninth tractate — Are all souls one? ENNEADS: IV IX. 8

First we must assure ourselves of the possibility of all souls being one as that of any given individual is. ENNEADS: IV IX. 1

Yet if we reject that unity, the universe itself ceases to be one thing and souls can no longer be included under any one principle. ENNEADS: IV IX. 1

In order that my feelings should of necessity be yours, the unity would have to be corporeal: only if the two recipient bodies made one, would the souls feel as one. ENNEADS: IV IX. 2

These reflections should show that there is nothing strange in that reduction of all souls to one. ENNEADS: IV IX. 4

Invoking God to become our helper, let us assert, that the very existence of many souls makes certain that there is first one from which the many rise. ENNEADS: IV IX. 4

Then [by the nature of body] the many souls could result only from the splitting up of that entity, each an entirely different substance: if this body-soul be uniform in kind, each of the resultant souls must be of the one kind; they will all carry the one Form undividedly and will differ only in their volumes. ENNEADS: IV IX. 4

Now, if their being souls depended upon their volumes they would be distinct; but if it is ideal-form that makes them souls, then all are, in virtue of this Idea, one. ENNEADS: IV IX. 4

What can it be that has brought the souls to forget the father, God, and, though members of the Divine and entirely of that world, to ignore at once themselves and It? ENNEADS: V I. 1

A child wrenched young from home and brought up during many years at a distance will fail in knowledge of its father and of itself: the souls, in the same way, no longer discern either the divinity or their own nature; ignorance of their rank brings self-depreciation; they misplace their respect, honouring everything more than themselves; all their awe and admiration is for the alien, and, clinging to this, they have broken apart, as far as a soul may, and they make light of what they have deserted; their regard for the mundane and their disregard of themselves bring about their utter ignoring of the divine. ENNEADS: V I. 1

Might not one [archetypal] man suffice for all, and similarly a limited number of souls produce a limitless number of men? ENNEADS: V VII. 1

This is why Zeus, although the oldest of the gods and their sovereign, advances first [in the Phaidros myth] towards that vision, followed by gods and demigods and such souls as are of strength to see. ENNEADS: V VIII. 10

So, too, the souls; they see all There in right of being sprung, themselves, of that universe and therefore including all from beginning to end and having their existence There if only by that phase which belongs inherently to the Divine, though often too they are There entire, those of them that have not incurred separation. ENNEADS: V VIII. 10

Every soul, authentically a soul, has some form of rightness and moral wisdom; in the souls within ourselves there is true knowing: and these attributes are no images or copies from the Supreme, as in the sense-world, but actually are those very originals in a mode peculiar to this sphere. ENNEADS: V IX. 13

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 II. 7

If Soul acts as a genus or a species, the various [particular] souls must act as species. ENNEADS: VI II. 22

If we decide to refer all souls to the higher, we are still at liberty to perform for Sensible qualities a division founded upon the senses themselves — the eyes, the ears, touch, taste, smell; and if we are to look for further differences, colours may be subdivided according to varieties of vision, sounds according to varieties of hearing, and so with the other senses: sounds may also be classified qualitatively as sweet, harsh, soft. ENNEADS: VI III. 17

Under the theory of presence by powers, souls are described as rays; the source remains self-locked and these are flung forth to impinge upon particular living things. ENNEADS: VI IV. 3

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? ENNEADS: VI IV. 4

We certainly distinguish between the soul of the All and the particular souls. ENNEADS: VI IV. 4

Thus the Authentic would be left self-gathered, while what we think of as the parts — the separate souls — would come into being to produce the multiple total of the universe. ENNEADS: VI IV. 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 IV. 4

Still, how account for the many souls, many intelligences, the beings by the side of the Being? ENNEADS: VI IV. 4

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 IV. 4

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 IV. 4

If we are told that these powers fade out similarly, we are left with only one imperishable: the souls, the Intellectual-Principle, become perishable; then since Being [identical with the Intellectual-Principle] becomes transitory, so also must the Beings, its productions. ENNEADS: VI IV. 10

But it has been abundantly stated that the emanants of the First are not perishable, that the souls, and the Intellectual-Principle with all its content, cannot perish. ENNEADS: VI IV. 10

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. ENNEADS: VI IV. 14

Before we had our becoming Here we existed There, men other than now, some of us gods: we were pure souls, Intelligence inbound with the entire of reality, members of the Intellectual, not fenced off, not cut away, integral to that All. ENNEADS: VI IV. 14

This principle, indeed, is the most solidly established of all, proclaimed by our very souls; we do not piece it up item by item, but find it within beforehand; it precedes even the principle by which we affirm unquestionably that all things seek their good; for this universal quest of good depends on the fact that all aim at unity and possess unity and that universally effort is towards unity. ENNEADS: VI V. 1

In this way the sphere is enveloped by one identical life in which it is inset; its entire content looks to the one life: thus all the souls are one, a one, however, which yet is infinite. ENNEADS: VI V. 9

Or take our souls in their possession of good; it is not one good for me and another for you; it is the same for both and not in the sense merely of distinct products of an identical source, the good somewhere above with something streaming from it into us; in any real receiving of good, giver is in contact with taker and gives not as to a recipient outside but to one in intimate contact. ENNEADS: VI V. 10

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 VI. 16

And if the Life-Form entire contains also souls, it must certainly be subsequent to the Intellectual-Principle. ENNEADS: VI VI. 17

Nor is the life of that Absolute Living-Form some feeble flickering; it is primal, the brightest, holding all that life has of radiance; it is that first light which the souls There draw upon for their life and bring with them when they come here. ENNEADS: VI VI. 18

God, or some one of the gods, in sending the souls to their birth, placed eyes in the face to catch the light and allotted to each sense the appropriate organ, providing thus for the safety which comes by seeing and hearing in time and, seeking or avoiding under guidance of touch. ENNEADS: VI VII. 1

Now, either he gave these organs to souls already possessing the sensitive powers or he gave senses and organs alike. ENNEADS: VI VII. 1

But if the souls were given the powers as well as the organs, then, souls though they were, they had no sensation before that giving. ENNEADS: VI VII. 1

If they possessed these powers from the moment of being souls and became souls in order to their entry into process, then it is of their very nature to belong to process, unnatural to them to be outside of process and within the Intellectual: they were made in the intent that they should belong to the alien and have their being amid evil; the divine provision would consist in holding them to their disaster; this is God’s reasoned purpose, this the plan entire. ENNEADS: VI VII. 1

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. ENNEADS: VI VII. 6

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 VII. 8

It might be likened to a living sphere teeming with variety, to a globe of faces radiant with faces all living, to a unity of souls, all the pure souls, not faulty but the perfect, with Intellect enthroned over all so that the place entire glows with Intellectual splendour. ENNEADS: VI VII. 15

It has produced Intellectual-Principle, it has produced Life, the souls which Intellectual-Principle sends forth and everything else that partakes of Reason, of Intellectual-Principle or of Life. ENNEADS: VI VII. 23

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 IX. 8

Is then this "centre" of our souls the Principle for which we are seeking? ENNEADS: VI IX. 8

If these circles were material and not spiritual, the link with the centres would be local; they would lie round it where it lay at some distant point: since the souls are of the Intellectual, and the Supreme still loftier, we understand that contact is otherwise procured, that is by those powers which connect Intellectual agent with Intellectual Object; this all the more, since the Intellect grasps the Intellectual object by the way of similarity, identity, in the sure link of kindred. ENNEADS: VI IX. 8